


Permanence

by UnluckyAlis



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Death, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not character death but Death is a character, not sure how angsty it's going to be yet, or slight angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnluckyAlis/pseuds/UnluckyAlis
Summary: Something's up with Danny. Blackouts, strange behaviour, and a growing emptiness that he can't explain. At least not to Tucker or Sam, but there may be one other person who can understand, as much as Danny hates it. But with the Observants on his tail, Freakshow on the run, and a mentor whose powers seem to be failing, Danny has much bigger things to worry about.





	1. Crossing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a chapter a day story for DannyMay 2019, each chapter will be based on a daily prompt to create a 31 chapter story.

Danny feels empty. Not his normal kind of empty, from those nights when he looks up at the stars and that spark of excitement is missing, and in its place is something that isn't quite disinterest and is hardly hatred but is more like the stars don't matter because, well, what does?

He isn't sure if this is a bad empty or a good one. Is there even a good empty? Either way, this is a different kind. It’s the kind of empty you might feel walking through a school after hours, once everyone has gone home and all the lights are off. Except instead of walking through a hallway you're lying on the ground, and it's very cold, and it's raining, and you're pretty sure there's mud in your hair and is that blood under your fingernails or just more mud? You hope it's mud.

That's how Danny feels.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, wrinkling his nose. Underneath the smell of the rain—he thinks Sam called it petrichor once—there's something sharp. It stings his nose and throat when he breathes in and makes his headache flare.

Danny tries to sit up, but the whole world rebels against him as it tilts and spins, and he ends up face down in the mud. Slowly, he pushes himself up to his hands and knees and tries to get a good look at his surroundings. Everything is blurry and dark and his head is pounding, making it hard for him to focus. Looking around just makes him dizzier so he looks down instead, at his hands. He's not wearing gloves, his skin is human. Pale, but lacking the bluish tint of his ghost form.

His knuckles are bruised, the skin split. It's a minor injury he's intimately familiar with. He pats his chest, arms, legs. No other injuries. His clothes are rumpled, not torn, but his jacket is gone.

Damn. He really liked that jacket.

Focusing his gaze on one spot on the ground, Danny tries to lurch to his feet. Tries. He's about halfway up when his stomach _twists_ and then he's on his knees again, vomiting. Nothing but bile and stomach acid comes out. After what feels like a solid ten minutes of dry heaving Danny gives up and collapses onto his side.

If he squints and focuses really hard, pushing through his headache and all the blurriness, he can see something tall, or at least taller than him when he's lying on the ground, and yellow. There's a lot of it, like a wall, but it's bending under the rain and wind. A field of... something. He struggles for a minute to remember what is tall, and yellow, and comes in a field, doing his best to ignore the throbbing headache.

Wheat. It's a wheat field. There aren't any wheat fields near Amity Park.

Danny groans. The cold must have been numbing the pain while he was unconscious, but now that his awareness is returning, he can feel every bruise across his aching body. He won't be surprised if, when he strips down to get changed later, his skin is painted blue and purple and that ugly yellow-brown from fresh bruises.

Curling up against the cold, Danny furrows his brow as he tries to remember what the hell just happened, but it keeps slipping through his fingers.

He blows on his hands, trying to warm them up, rubbing them together and tucking them under his arms. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to remember something vital.

 _Cryokinesis_. Duh.

Danny's breath hitches, his headache flaring as he activates his ice powers. His vision sharpens and gets colder. That's really the only way he can describe it, as if he's staring through a thin veil of ice that almost looks like it isn't there, but it is, and everything is just a little bit bluer. If things could look cold, this would be it.

With his cryokinesis on the cold rain doesn't bother him as much, but it's a bit of a double-edged sword. It protects him, for now, but if he uses it too long then he'll really start freezing. But it gives him a couple hours, just long enough to rest his eyes. Maybe his headache will go away by then. Yeah, sleep sounds good. He can figure everything out afterward.

(-｡- ) z z z

Danny only heard the phrase "crossing over" twice in his life. His parents may study ghosts but they always preferred the more scientific ectology rather than the metaphysical contemplation of life and the afterlife. It is more than a little ironic they dedicated their lives to studying the dead but never once considered what happens to the people who _don't_ become ghosts.

Danny is more than a little thankful for this. If his parents can throw themselves so wholeheartedly into a twenty-year argument about the existence of _Santa Claus_ that it ruins every Christmas for his entire life, he can hardly imagine what would happen if they started fighting over beings much greater than any ghost or human.

The first time he heard someone refer to death as "crossing over" he was four years old and his grandmother had just passed away. The memory isn't perfect, he was four after all, but it's one of his earliest. Unlike other children Danny grew up with a deep understanding of the concept of death and its permanence—or impermanence in the case of ghosts—thanks to his parents. But this had been his first real experience with death and, naturally, he had questions.

His parents weren't much help. Danny can remember, barely, going up to his father and asking where Grandma was now that she was dead. He knew she would never come back but, young as he was, he couldn't really grasp the idea that she might just _not exist_ anymore. She had to be somewhere, just not anywhere Danny himself could go.

"That's a complicated question, son," Jack said. "Your mother and I have been trying to find where ghosts go for years."

What followed was a two-hour lecture on the Nightingale Theory of Ecto-Habitation that left Danny more confused and with more questions than ever. The Old English didn't help.

What did help was his talk with Angela Foley, his best friend Tucker's mom, two days after the funeral. Danny always saw her, and her husband Maurice, as something like second parents to him. Or third, Jazz was his second if he really thought about it. So when he had a question his own parents couldn't help him with the Foley's were his next best choice.

"What happens to people when they die?" Danny asked.

Angela took Danny's hand and guided him over to the living room. She sat him down in the big, plush chair that Maurice always liked to sit in, and knelt in front of him.

"Your parents believe ghosts exist," she said, "but not everyone does."

Danny nodded. There was a mean boy in his preschool class who liked to tease him because his parents believed in ghosts. The boy said it was stupid and ghosts weren't real.

"Well, this is kind of like that."

Danny stared at Angela with wide eyes. "Not everyone knows people die?"

Angela held back a laugh. "No, that's not it. But just like people believe different things about ghosts, they also believe different things about what happens to people when they die."

"What do you believe?"

"I believe that death is like a crossing," Angela said. She grabbed Danny's tiny hands and rubbed his knuckles in a comforting manner. Danny saw her do this with Tucker whenever he was hurt. "When people die, they leave this world for another, a place where they can be happy forever."

"But... where?" Danny frowned. That sounded like what his parents said about ghosts, but ghosts could come back. He wanted to know why other people, his grandma, couldn't.

Angela smiled, but it was sad. "I wish I could tell you where, I wish I knew. Some people think they do and maybe they're right. But I don't think that's something we get to know until it's our own time to cross over."

Danny looked down at his knees, plucking at his shorts and fighting back tears. "So, Grandma..."

"Wherever she is, she's happy. Okay?"

Danny still thinks about what Angela said sometimes, especially now that he knows ghosts are real, that he's one of them. It's hard not to think of that _other place_ when he was almost there himself.

(-︿ - )

Danny remembers everything about the night it all began. The feel of the switch giving under his hand, the low hum of the portal that quickly built into a piercing shriek as it came to life. The warning sparks over his head before everything went white. Pain radiated through his body. And then nothing.

That was the first time Danny ever felt empty, his empty. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't feel. He could hardly think. It wasn't like he was floating in a vast emptiness, more like he was the emptiness.

In that moment nothing mattered. He didn't forget about his life, his friends that had just watched him die, or his parents that would come home and find him dead, but they didn't matter. Because he was dead and that's just how things work when you're dead.

Even meeting _them_ hadn't shaken Danny at the time. It should have, they were terrifying. But it wasn't until later that night, when Sam and Tucker were gone and his family was asleep, that Danny felt the fear hit him. The mind-numbing uncontrollable anxiety. The sight of that person. The knowledge that Danny shouldn't have, was never meant to have, but did.

It felt like he was in the void for hours before they found him. Danny couldn't see his own body, but he could see them. And they looked normal.

Brown hair down to their shoulder, eyes the colour of tarnished nickels. Jeans, a jacket, a plain shirt.

They smiled at Danny. "Are you ready?"

"For what?"

Their smile widened. "To cross over."

If Danny could look away he would have. He would have looked down, like he always does when he's deep in thought, shoved his hands in his pockets so they couldn't see him fidgeting, and considered the statement. But he couldn't. Not because he was frozen, but because he had no body, no eyes. He was nothing, emptiness, and they had invaded this emptiness in a way that meant he would never be able to look away from them again.

"I don't have to?" Danny asked.

"No, not this time. It's up to you." They folded their arms behind their head and shrugged. "It could go either way, you know? It doesn't really matter."

"I guess not."

"So?"

"I think... I'll stay."

They tilted their head and Danny suddenly felt heavier.

His form returned first, closing in around the emptiness. It was a vague silhouette of a boy, skeletal in its design, slowly filling up as his body was built again. Flesh and bone, blood and sinew. With it came the little things, like emotions, and caring. "You're not going to stop me?" he asked.

"No." They laughed. "There's no point. You all come to me eventually."

(X_ X )

Not everything was returned to Danny that night. Even as the last hair on his head was formed, he could feel it. A cavity in the middle of his chest, one last bit of emptiness that can never be filled.

One last place they can touch whenever they please.

Danny met Death once in his life and he never wants to meet them again. But some things are inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping that this will really help me get back into writing fanfiction so that I can start working on the Survivalists again, because I know that's the story you all really want to see. I'm only aiming for 2000-word chapters for this fic, or at least that's the minimum.


	2. Farewell

Two days ago

Danny fiddles with the radio, trying to find a good station to listen to. Or _any_ station. An hour out of Amity Park and he and Jazz are too far from the city to get the stations they know. There was this French station he stumbled across a few minutes ago, and he might have stayed with that one if it were actually playing music, but it sounded like news. Or maybe a talk show. Or a podcast. How is he supposed to know? He doesn't speak French.

"Danny, stop playing with the radio and focus on the road," Jazz says, slapping his hand away.

Danny rolls his eyes but returns his hand to the wheel anyways. "If you want to drive, be my guest."

"That would be against the law." Jazz crosses her arms and Danny spares her a quick glance over his sunglasses. She's pouting.

"Not my fault you didn't get your license."

"Between Dad's teaching and my studies, of course I couldn't!" Jazz sinks down lower in her seat.

"Dad taught me too."

"Yeah, and I have no idea how you pa- _Danny!_ " Jazz yelps when he suddenly changes lanes, slipping between two cars to pass the slow van in front of them. "Be careful!"

"I _am_ careful, you just worry too much. But it's not too late to turn back and get a plane ticket instead." Danny grins when he sees Jazz pale in the mirror.

She shakes her head vigorously. "No, never again. Not after Air Grits."

"I hope you remember this the next time I ask for a favour," Danny says. He looks over his shoulder before changing back into the slow lane, struggling to find a clear line of sight between all the boxes in the back seat. "Not every brother would volunteer to drive his sister sixteen hours to Harvard, _overnight_ , while their parents are at a ghost hunting convention in California."

"Sure, I'll try very, very hard never to forget this great debt I owe you."

"Excellent." Danny reaches for the radio again.

"Two hands!"

"Why doesn't this thing have a CD player?" Danny whines, shoulders slumping. "They had CDs in the nineties, did people _really_ still use cassettes?"

Jazz doesn't dignify him with an answer, and he sighs.

One hour down, fifteen to go, and it will be getting dark in a couple more. His mother's worried tirade echoes in his head as he watches the road.

" _Drive carefully, don't forget to use your signal. If you get tired pull over and nap. I know you slept all day so you could stay awake tonight, but that's no excuse for dangerous driving. Turn your brights on when you can, and remember to text and keeps us updated so we know you're safe. We'll be driving through the night too."_

_"Oh, cool, so you want me to text while I drive?"_

Danny chuckles. That comment ended his mother's worried babbling pretty quickly. He's had his license for a year now, he knows what to do—and what not to do—to drive safely. He keeps his eyes forward, on the road and the cars ahead of him. Or he tries to.

An important part of driving is staying aware of your surroundings, but the way Danny keeps scanning the sky, the fields, the ditches, any shadow at the edge of his vision, he knows his kind of awareness isn't what his driving instructors had in mind. You learn a few things about situational awareness when you spend most of three years fighting against ghosts, too bad it's becoming something of a bad habit.

Danny shakes his head and pulls his gaze away from the sky. He's not expecting to meet any spectral threats outside Amity Park, and Jazz has a point. He needs to focus on driving. He looks down at the white lines splitting the lanes, pushing all his attention on them so he isn't tempted to look for ghosts.

It's calming. At the speed they're going, each dash blurs together, almost tricking his mind into thinking it's just one solid line. Danny keeps watching the lines, straining to see the individual dashes before they shoot by. He squints, furrows his brows, and bites his lower lip. A headache starts to build from all the strain, and he's forced to close his eyes for a second.

"The light's green."

Danny opens his eyes and blinks. It's dark out, stars and store signs bright against the black sky. The car isn't moving. They're stopped at an intersection. He doesn't remember stopping or even pulling off the Interstate for that matter. He looks at Jazz. She has a book in her lap. There's a canvas bag resting on the console, wedged between their two seats. It wasn't there a second ago. The box on the floor right behind it is open and he can see the space where the bag came from.

Someone behind them honks.

Danny looks up at the stoplight and sees that it is, indeed, green.

"Danny?" Jazz asks.

He removes his foot from the break and hits the gas a little too hard. They lurch forward, roll through the intersection, then pick up speed on the other side. As soon as they're clear of the lights the car behind them shoots back, the front passenger gesturing rudely out the window.

Ignoring the gesture, Danny spots the entrance onto the Interstate and immediately turns onto it.

"Don't we need gas?"

The gauge says they're at less than a quarter tank.

Danny can feel Jazz staring at him. She doesn't say anything as he drives ahead to the next exit and pulls into the nearest gas station and lines up at the pump.

She grabs her wallet from her purse and opens the passenger door. "I'll get gas."

Danny nods and sits back, letting his hands drop into his lap, watching Jazz in the mirrors. Their eyes meet for a moment and he looks away, feeling heat rush to his cheeks. He tries to push down the wave of shame he's feeling but, in the end, it wins out and he's left stewing while Jazz fills up the tank and goes to pay.

Now she knows Danny's been lying to her. He thought he would be okay for their drive, but evidently not, and the look in her eyes. Jazz isn't really one to get mad, ever. Annoyed, sure. Annoy _ing_? All the time. But mad? Never, unless her books are involved. She doesn't get mad, she gets disappointed.

Danny hates seeing that expression on her face. The resigned frown, as if she's thinking _of course this happened_ , the slow blink and deep breath as she processes things, the way she looks at him without breaking eye contact, conveying how upset she is in that single moment.

He hates it.

When she comes back, he doesn't start the car.

"It happened again," she says. "You told me it stopped happening."

"It's not as bad, isn't that basically the same thing?" he asks.

"It isn't and you know that!" Jazz turns to face him and grabs his hand. "I can put off going to college for another year, it's not a big deal."

Danny pulls his hand away. "No!" He looks down when Jazz flinches. "You already took a year to stay back in Amity Park."

"Because that was the deal, I won't leave until you're doing better. You were _driving_ , Danny. Do you realize how dangerous that is? What happens if you dissociate like this again and I'm not here to snap you out of it?"

"It's not... I told you, it's not like that. This is, it's different from when I dissociate." Danny grabs the stirring wheel, squeezing until his hands are numb. "It's different," he says softly.

Jazz leans back, resting her elbow on the window sill and her cheek against her knuckles. "What kind of different?"

"It's hard to explain."

"It's hard to put things we don't understand into words. Don't worry about trying to make sense to me, how does it make sense to you?"

Danny sighs, leaning forward to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. "It's like I'm missing something. Everything is familiar, but it isn't right, and there's this... hole where something should be. But it isn't."

"That sounds like-"

"I know what it sounds like!" Danny punches his thigh, grinding his knuckles deep. "I _know_ what it sounds like, but it's not the same. I can't explain it to you."

Jazz is silent and when Danny takes a peek at her, she's staring somewhere just above his head, deep in thought.

"You can't explain it to _me_ ," she says.

It takes Danny a moment to realize what she means. He slipped up.

"Could you explain it to Sam or Tucker?"

"No."

"What about your guardian, Clock Stopper Ghost?"

"Oh, maybe, if I _knew_ a 'Clock Stopper Ghost.' But I don't. I _do_ know a _Clockwork_. And, no."

"Take this seriously, Danny."

Danny scoffs at the hypocrisy. He wants to stop her right there. He knows who she's going to say next. Doesn't want her to.

"Vlad."

Danny grits his teeth.

"You could have told me it's a half-ghost thing," Jazz says. "I realize I won't be able to understand everything about what you experience, but I'd like to try. That doesn’t mean you have to tell me everything, but I would appreciate it if you could at least tell me when something you're dealing with isn't something I can understand.

"I did."

"No, you told me you couldn't explain it."

Danny looks up long enough to see into the gas station. The attendant is standing at the window giving them a dirty look. They've been sitting here way too long. At this rate, Jazz will miss her 8:00 a.m. arrival time.

Giving the attendant a jaunty wave, Danny starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

"Turn around, I'm not going," Jazz says.

"You are."

"Danny, I'm worried about you. You've had a tough year, even with me here. What are you going to do when I'm gone?"

" _I don't want you here_ ," Danny snaps.

Jazz goes silent and Danny feels like he's been punched in the face by guilt.

"That's not what I meant," he says. "I don't want you putting off your dream for mine. What kind of hero would I be, then? I'd feel like such a Freud."

A cricket, a damn cricket hiding somewhere in the ditches, chirrups.

"That was horrible," Jazz says, but she's smiling again.

"I thought it was a good one." Danny checks the road signs and heads for I-90 East. Before Jazz can protest, he continues. "Let me try and figure this out myself a little bit, okay? I'll talk to you every day, but I'm not totally helpless on my own."

"I'll give Sam and Tucker the memo."

Danny grins. "Please."

The conversation isn't over, not really. But Jazz is going to Harvard and that's that. She already turned down going to Princeton or Berkeley, the two schools she always said had the best psychology programs, so that she could be closer to Amity Park. Closer to Danny. He doesn't want any more guilt on top of that, not that this drive has done much to help so far.

He pokes the cassette deck. "Do you have any tapes in that pile of junk back there?"

Jazz punches him in the shoulder and Danny laughs.

( ^ ▽^)

They get to Harvard just after eight. The campus is huge and there are so many residential halls, Danny just lets Jazz point to where he's supposed to go, chauffeuring her around campus as she checks-in, finds out which hall she's staying in, and gets her key.

"Why did we have to get here so early?" Danny asks when Jazz returns to the car. It's almost eight-thirty and there's barely anyone else here yet. Danny's only seen a handful of tearful parents so far. The way Jazz told him the plan when they were scheduling her move a couple weeks ago, it sounded like she had to get to the university by eight _or else_.

"Eight is the earliest students can pick up their keys," Jazz says. She opens the trunk and grabs her suitcase, swinging it down to the pavement.

Danny raises an eyebrow. "And what was the latest."

"... Three."

He sucks on his lips but doesn't say anything when he sees Jazz's guilty smile.

"I want to get to know the campus before the opening day events. I know they don't start until seven, but there's a lot to explore."

Danny shakes his head and grabs a couple boxes.

"I know how we could make this go a lot faster," Danny says after their first trip across the lawn, into the dorms, and up the stairs to Jazz's third-floor room.

"How?" Jazz asks, although she's already grabbing her next box.

"Easy. I go ghost. I can pick up the whole car, turn it invisible and intangible. There's enough room in there for this tiny thing, as long as I don't put it down. Then you can unload the boxes. It'll only take a couple minutes!" Danny stands proudly, with his fists on his hips and his chest puffed up.

"Are you being serious?" Jazz asks.

Danny's smile falters and he deflates a little. "No?"

It doesn't take long to get everything from the car to Jazz's room, although Danny still thinks using his ghost powers would be better. But with his strength, he can carry more boxes than the average person anyways. By nine-thirty Jazz is almost completely settled.

"Are you sure you don't want to have a nap before you go?" Jazz asks.

"Nah. At this rate, I already won't get home until after one." Danny sets his sunglasses down on her bed and stretches his arms above his head, holding back a yawn. "Besides, I've had longer days."

Jazz pulls Danny into a hug, squeezing tightly. "Stay safe, little brother."

Danny hugs her back just as tightly. "You know I will."

Jazz is a little teary-eyed when they separate.

Danny thinks it's ridiculous. They're only sixteen hours apart, by car. He can fly that distance any day and be back home before dinner.

But, somehow, it feels like Danny is missing something.

( • ⌓•)

It's a long, boring drive home with no one to talk to and no music to listen to. Danny manages to hold on to a few radio stations for a while, but it doesn't take long before he gets out of range. Eventually, he gives up and just drives in silence.

He does everything he can to make sure he doesn't black out again. If he can even call it blacking out. He's pretty sure that to black out you have to be unconscious.

Every once in a while, he pinches his arms or slaps his cheeks to make sure he isn't in any kind of trance. He avoids watching the lines and just focuses on looking from the road, to the cars ahead, to the cars behind, to his speedometer, and back again. Cycling over and over. It's monotonous, but the fact that he actually needs to pay attention keeps him from zoning out.

He stops to eat twice, getting a burrito for brunch and a burger for dinner. Nasty Burgers are better. He makes sure to text his mom at every rest stop and keep her updated.

By the time the sun starts setting he only has six hours to go. Driving west, the sun is in his eyes as it sinks over the horizon. He squints, pawing around the console for his sunglasses. A long minute passes before he remembers. His goodbye with Jazz, he left his sunglasses on her bed. Damn.

Resigned to his fate, he glares defiantly into the sun. Ghosts can't go blind, can they? Technically, they don't even use eyes to see. Just for decoration.

Danny blinks when he sees a dark spot in his vision. Maybe ghosts _can_ be blinded. He looks away from the sun, but the spot doesn't follow like it should. When he looks back, the spot has grown to a huge mass, blocking the sun and the road. He doesn't have time to touch his breaks before he hits it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't look into the sun, kids, or else weird shadowy masses will attack you.
> 
> Danny drives like Jack. Poor Jazz. Then again, she drives like him too, just couldn't hold it back long enough to get her license. I based some of Danny and Jazz's interactions off my own relationship with my brothers because that's just more fun.
> 
> I couldn't help it, I just had to have Jazz give Clockwork a ridiculous nickname. But at this point, she's just doing it to bug Danny.


	3. Barrier

Present Day

Danny is on the verge of sleep when his body jolts, as if he's falling, and his eyes fly open. His headache protests, flaring and throbbing as he turns onto his back.

Right. Sleep is bad. He probably has a concussion.

Danny forces himself to sit up, fingers twisting in the grass as he struggles to stay upright. The last thing he remembers, he and Jazz were loading up the car so he could drive her to college. He pats his pockets, looking for his phone as questions start flying through his mind.

What happened? Where is he? Where's Jazz? What time is it? _Where the hell is his phone_?

Sitting here won't get him any answers.

Getting to his feet is a slow and painful process, and the pounding rain doesn't help. The fat drops pelt against his bruised body, and while it's nothing compared to taking a hit from Val's bazooka, it still hurts.

Danny glances toward the field. The rain and darkness make it hard to see, but it looks like it goes on for a while. He looks to the line of trees instead. If he focuses hard enough, it sounds like the highway is close by. He stumbles towards the trees, bracing himself against the closest one as soon as he reaches it. Everything is still spinning and he's fighting the urge to hurl again. He already knows there's nothing left in his stomach to come up.

Lurching from one tree to another, he painstakingly makes his way through the thicket, sighing in relief when he sees the road. A few cars roar by and Danny shades his eyes against their blinding headlights.

There aren't any signs nearby—of course Danny isn't _that_ lucky—but he does see a large green shape further up the ditch. He grins and shuffles forward, smile widening when he recognizes his crappy old Volkswagen.

There are muddy tracks through the grass from the road to his car. The car is off and the windshield is covered in a spider-web of cracks. The front lights are busted, too, but otherwise it looks okay.

Danny phases through the front door without a second thought and collapses in the driver's seat. He sits there for a moment, breathing deeply, before looking around. The keys are in the ignition. His phone in on the floor by the gas pedal. No sign of his jacket.

Reaching down, Danny grabs his phone, frowning at the crack on his screen, and turns it on. It's five in the morning on the twenty-eighth. As far as he was aware, it was still the twenty-sixth. That's a whole day, _more than a day_ , that he can't remember.

There are twelve new notifications. Danny decides to check those first before he starts fretting over what the hell happened and why he can't remember it.

 **Sam (yesterday)  
**How's the road trip?

 **Tucker (yesterday)**  
dude I'm so bored let's go fight something  
when you get back

 **Mom (12:31 am)**  
Are you home yet?

 **Mom (1:17 am)**  
Jazz says she hasn't heard from you. Text  
me when you get home.

 **Sam (1:18 am)  
**Bet you wish you were flying instead

 **Sam (2:46 am)**  
Danny your mom just called me. Where  
are you?

 **Mom (3:13 am)**  
Daniel James Fenton you better call me  
back this instant.

 **_Missed call_ ** **Mom (3:23 am)**

 **_Missed call_ ** **Mom (3:24 am)**

 **_Missed call_ ** **Jazz (3:59 am)**

 **Jazz (4:46 am)**  
Mom and Dad are freaking out. Is it a ghost?  
Are you safe?

 **Jazz (5:05 am)**  
Danny I swear if you're playing a joke...  
you're scaring me where are you?!

Jazz's last text is only a few minutes old. Danny quickly messages her back.

 **You (5:08 am)  
**Sorry my phone died

He sends the same message to his mom, and texts Sam and Tucker that he's okay, but he needs to talk to them as soon as he gets home. He reaches for the keys, intent on starting the car, and hesitates. It's probably dangerous to drive with a concussion.

Instead he locks the car, pockets his keys and phone, and transforms. With his ghost half comes temporary relief from the pain. His bruises ache a little less and even his headache goes down, but he knows it's not permanent relief. The longer Danny uses his ghost half to escape the pain, the more it will hurt when he returns. He learned that the hard way.

Abandoning his car, Danny flies the rest of the way to Amity Park. Driving, it would have taken him two hours at least. Flying, he's back at Fenton Works in minutes.

Danny heads to his room to change out of his sopping clothes. His shirt hits the floor with a wet smack when he takes it off and he glances in the mirror. The bruises are bad. His whole chest is yellowed, the edges of the bruise along his ribcage a dark purple-blue. That _really_ isn't good.

There's another bruise on his left shoulder, this one much smaller, but just as sore.

He drags his fingers across the bruise on his chest and winces at the pain even that light touch brings. This isn't going to be easy to hide. Danny pulls on a hoodie and trades his jeans for sweatpants before checking his phone again. One new message from Sam.

 **Sam (5:17 am)  
**Tucker just got here

 **You (5:23 am)  
**On my way

He flies to Sam's, intangible so the rain doesn't soak him again, and phases through her balcony door. Sam is sitting on her bed while Tucker lounges on a beanbag chair. The TV in the corner is on, the volume down low as Tiffany Snow gives the early morning news. Without a word, Danny floats over to Sam's bed, lays down, and transforms back to Fenton.

"Dude," Tucker says, sitting up to see Danny better. "You look like hell."

"I feel like hell," Danny answers.

"What happened?" Sam asks.

"That's the thing, I don't know." Danny raises his arm, looking at his fingers. Under the soft light of Sam's bedroom, he can see that it's just dirt under his fingernails, not blood. "One minute I was helping Jazz pack, and the next I'm lying in a ditch and everything hurts."

"That sounds... really bad," Tucker says. "And you can't remember anything?"

Danny glares at Tucker. Tucker just shrugs.

"I might have something that can help," Sam says. She gives Danny a worried look before rising from her bed and leaving the room.

Neither Danny or Tucker say anything for a moment. Danny debates whether he should show them the bruises or not. It won't tell them what happened and, in the end, it'll just make them worry more. He decides to keep the bruises to himself.

"Did you tell Jazz?" Tucker asks.

"No."

"Are you going to?"

"No."

"Okay." Tucker drums his fingers against his knees, idly looking around the room and chewing on his lip. Silence lingers before he speaks again. "How do you feel?"

"I said 'everything hurts.'" Danny keeps staring straight up at the ceiling. He doesn't need to see Tucker's face to know the look his best friend is giving him, one that says _you know that's not what I meant_.

Danny rolls onto his left side, mindful of his shoulder, and looks at Tucker. "Not right. But not really wrong, either."

"Is it a halfa thing?"

Danny scowls. "That's what Jazz says, too. Are you guys texting behind my back? Don't believe anything she says, I never slept with a stuffed rabbit."

"No, it was a cat." Tucker grins. "You called it pup and cried when you lost it when you were eleven. But I don't need to talk to Jazz to know that. I know _you_ , Danny."

"Wow, I feel so sorry for you."

They laugh, Tucker shaking his head and Danny wincing as it makes his _everything_ feel worse.

"But dude, seriously. There's only one other person who understands halfa things."

Danny wants to sigh. He wants to growl. He wants to shout and scream that he knows. There's only one other person in the whole world, in all the Infinite Realms, who can understand. Only one other person like him. Of course, Vlad just has to be the person Danny hates most in the world. Hell, he'd take _Dash_ being a halfa over Vlad. Or even Sam's mom.

Actually, scratch that. Sam's mom would be a terrifying ghost.

"I'll figure something out," Danny says.

Tucker doesn't look satisfied. In fact, he looks ready to protest, but then Sam returns to the room, carrying a book.

"I got this from Grandma's library," Sam says, sitting down by Danny's feet. She starts flipping through the book. "It's about ways you can improve memory. There are some meditation techniques and stuff like that. Says it's good for helping you remember things you've forgotten."

Finding the page she wants, Sam turns the book around and shows it to Danny. The title of the chapter is _Meditating to Remember_.

"Want to try it?"

(￢ε ￢ )

Danny feels like an idiot. He's sitting cross-legged on Sam's bed, hands resting on his knees, humming continuously as he thinks _remember, remember, remember_.

Sam's laughing doesn't help.

"What?" Danny cracks one eye open and glares at her.

"Just thinking about the last time you meditated. It's less creepy now," Sam says.

Danny flushes as he remembers being under Ember's control, absolutely smitten with Sam and trying to summon her through the power of meditation. Yep, this is stupid and never going to work.

"Why are you humming?" Tucker asks. He hasn't moved from the beanbag, flipping through the book Sam brought and shaking his head every few pages. Apparently, he thinks it's stupid too.

"Aren't you supposed to hum?" Danny looks at Sam. "Aren't I supposed to hum? That's what people do, right?"

"Whatever works for you," Sam says.

Danny immediately stops humming and closes his eyes again. He doesn't really have any idea what he's supposed to do. The book says to sit still and empty his mind, so does that mean he needs to stop thinking? But he can't just stop thinking, right? No matter what, people are always thinking something. Right now, he's even thinking about thinking.

And shouldn't he be thinking about what he wants to remember? He's trying, hard, but keeps coming up empty. He briefly entertains the idea of this being concussion related memory loss, but he knows what that feels like. This definitely isn't it. There are no fuzzy images, or snatches of lost thoughts, or confusing, out of context memories. He can remember right up until he loaded the last of Jazz's boxes into the car and then... nothing.

It's like there's a wall in his mind, some kind of barrier, keeping those memories out. It's frustrating.

 _Stop that_ , Danny chastises. No thinking. Empty your mind.

He focuses on what he can hear instead of all the thoughts running through his head. Tucker flipping through the book, his little hums of disinterest as he reads. Sam shifting on the bed, plucking at the comforter with her nails. The hum of the TV in the background, Tiffany Snow's soft voice.

"... Announcement from the mayor... government issued warning... fugitive... Frederich Isak Showenhower."

"Wait, what?" Danny's focus snaps to the TV. He scoots to the edge of Sam's bed and tells her to turn up the volume.

Tiffany is looking gravely at the camera as she speaks. "Showenhower has been in government custody for two years until early this morning when he escaped. The public is warned to report any sighting of this man to the nearest authorities and do not approach, he is considered armed and dangerous."

No one says anything as Tiffany moves on to the next report. Danny hasn't thought about Freakshow in a while. Not since Danny destroyed the Reality Gauntlet after their last fight. The man was never very high on Danny's list of enemies, Freakshow's ghostly allies and the Gauntlet providing most of his power. Armed and dangerous are the last words Danny would use to describe him.

"That kinda seems like overkill for Freakshow," Tucker says. "He's pretty weak."

"You're missing the point, Tucker!" Sam says. "Freakshow was being held by the GIW, no one escapes the GIW."

"Except Danny," Tucker says.

"Yeah, accept me." Danny nods.

"Okay, you're _both_ missing the point. I don't think the GIW would call someone dangerous if they didn't actually think they were, not a _human_ at least. But that’s not even the worst of it." Sam shuts the TV off and turns to Danny. "Freakshow hates you. One way or another, he's going to find his way here, and who do you think he's going to be after?"

"Great, just perfect. This is exactly what I need right now." Danny flops onto his back and throws an arm over his eyes. He's not too worried about Freakshow, but it probably _is_ better to have Freakshow contained rather than running around all over the place. But Danny can't track people the way he can track ghosts. "I need to talk to Clockwork."

Danny doesn't move to get up. He tentatively touches his head, then lowers his hand to his chest and grimaces. "But later. I'm going to sleep. Wake me up every hour to make sure I'm not dead or whatever."

"We know," Sam and Tucker chorus.

Danny grins. "Love you guys."

"I love you more," Tucker says.

Sam rolls her eyes. "You're both idiots." She grabs a blanket off the end of her bed and throws it over Danny, who pulls it up to his chin.

Clockwork will have the answers Danny needs. He just knows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or will he?
> 
> I am so sick today it's absolutely horrible, which is why I'm posting this at 1 am. I considered not posting today, but I am determined to follow this through. Plus, I doubt I'd have time to write two chapters in a day to catch up, considering how distracted I get.
> 
> After being friends for so long, I like to think Danny and Tucker can read each other pretty well.


	4. Ectoplasm

Clockwork's lair, the Clocktower, isn't one that can be found by any old ghost. Danny's almost certain the only reason _he_ ever manages to find it is because Clockwork lets him. It's never in the same place twice.

Sometimes Danny goes through door after door, passing through different realms, before he can find it. Other days he can just stumble across it as he flies aimlessly through the Ghost Zone. One time, when Clockwork was feeling particularly cheeky, Danny came face to face with the Clocktower the second he entered the Ghost Zone.

Today, Clockwork seems determined to keep Danny away. Danny's gone through at least eight doors, one portal to the 1950's and back again, and invaded four lairs on his path to the tower. Clockwork is determined, yes, but not enough to hide the Clocktower's signature from Danny's ghost sense. If that were the case, Danny would have turned back hours ago.

He ended up sleeping for six hours in Sam's bed, she and Tucker taking turns waking him up every once in a while. By the time Danny woke up for real, the world had stopped spinning, the dizziness faded, and his headache was little more than an afterthought. Thank you, weird ghost biology, for the affect you have on human healing.

Almost immediately after waking, Danny set off for Clockwork's, promising to report back to his friends with what he learned. In the meantime, Sam and Tucker were stuck with monitor duty, keeping an eye on the news for any updates on Freakshow.

"This better be the last one," Danny mutters as he zeroes in on a dark purple door. It's sinking down to the crumbling road beneath him and, as he lands and approaches the door, he feels his ghost sense flair.

It took Danny more than a year to learn to control his ghost sense like this, once he realized it _could_ be controlled. It isn't perfect, especially since a lot his normal enemies give off very similar feelings. But ghosts like Clockwork, that are powerful and ancient, have a different feel. An intense thrumming that resonates with Danny's very being.

But in Clockwork's case, that might also be because of the connection they share as guardian and ward.

Danny opens the door, grinning when a giant cog goes floating by. _Finally_.

Despite how many times he's been to Clockwork's lair, Danny still feels the need to pause and take it in. There's no other lair like it, and not just because each ghost's lair is unique. There are much stranger things than a giant clock in Pandora's realm. But when Danny sees the giant grandfather clock, it's like he's seeing something out of time.

Not to mention the fantastic pun that is the Clocktower's name.

Danny flies up to the massive doors, thick oak panels reinforced by black iron and set in a stone archway. The medieval architecture of the tower's base is offset by the modern-looking clock face at the top. The materials that make up the walls change at intervals along the tower. Grass and mud for the very bottom foot, followed by wooden beams, and topped with ill-shaped stones that are masterfully arranged so they look like they were always meant to go together. Further up Danny can see red bricks, concrete, and there's even a thick band of glass that looks like a section from a skyscraper.

Sam would love this place. If Clockwork would ever let Danny bring her here again, or anyone really.

He doesn't bother knocking, instead pushing the door open and making his way to where he knows Clockwork will be. The viewing room, where the past, the present, the future, and all alternate realities can be seen through cog-shaped screens.

Clockwork is floating over the main platform, looking at the largest screen that shows the current timeline. His hands are folded behind his back, staff dangling from his fingertips.

"You're stubborn today, Daniel," Clockwork says. It's amazing how hearing Danny's full name from Vlad sends shivers up his spine, but when Clockwork says it, Danny feels reassured somehow. It's nice.

Danny crosses his arms. "I'm stubborn every day."

"Oh, I know." Clockwork turns, drifting back so Danny can see the viewing screen. It's showing what's happening right now. More than that, it's showing it from Danny's perspective, so it looks like an infinite loop of the viewing screen itself.

"That's just creepy," Danny says. He looks away, then whips around and looks at the screen again. The image doesn't change. Turning around, Danny peeks at the screen from the corner of his eye. Still nothing.

"As long as you are looking at the screen, all it will show is the screen," Clockwork says.

"Ugh, that's boring." Danny ignores Clockwork's chuckle. "You already know why I'm here."

Clockwork hesitates, looking between Danny and the screen. "Humour me."

"I want to know where Freakshow is." Danny scans the other screens, the ones showing different realities. He knows they won't help him here, but it's still cool to see. Sam and Tucker are in a few of them. Brief glimpses of Amity Park. Ghosts. It looks like they're all set on one focused perspective, rather than flipping through perspectives the way Clockwork likes to do.

Danny gets a sinking feeling that every pair of eyes he's seeing through are his own.

"I'm afraid I can only show you what you see," Clockwork says.

"So..." Danny pauses, slowly looking back to his guardian, his mentor. The being that is supposed to guide him when he needs it. "You're not going to help."

"When all is right, you will be able to see with more than just your own eyes. But ultimately," Clockwork's lips quirk, "no."

"What day I lost? Can't you at least show me what happened then?" Danny doesn't want to admit how scared he is. It's only been a few hours, but he's been doing everything he can to push those thoughts and feelings to the back of his mind. He knows that if he gets overwhelmed, then he'll start feeling empty and distant again, and that's the last thing he wants.

Clockwork's jaw clenches, eyes widening. The ghost of time is a man of few expressions, all expressions Danny knows well. But this one is new, and Danny has no idea what it means.

"Ah, yes, your... lost time. I'm afraid I can't show you that either."

"You can only show me what _I_ see," Danny mutters. Maybe not remembering it doesn't count as seeing? He huffs. "Okay, fine, whatever. I'll figure it out on my own."

He spares Clockwork one last, pleading look, and is met with a stony, unmoving gaze. Danny was hoping for guidance at most, a leisurely visit at least. Clockwork always manages to put him at ease. Until now.

Danny swallows the lump in his throat as he leaves.

( ･᷄ ‸･᷅)

Danny swoops down and punches a strange, hybrid snake-bear ghost in the face. It looks like one of Vlad's experiments gone wrong but is obviously a lot weaker than those, if the way it shrieks and goes flying back when it gets hit is any indication. Ghost now vulnerable, Danny pulls out the Thermos and sucks it inside, slapping the cap on as soon as the beam fades.

He's been patrolling Amity and hunting for ghosts—and Freakshow—ever since he returned from the Clocktower. Danny was in the mood to hit something by the time he made it out of the Ghost Zone and Sam and Tucker, deathly bored from a day of watching the news, were eager to jump at the chance to fight some ghosts.

There are no developments on Freakshow, no help from Clockwork, and no breakthroughs on Danny's missing memories. He doesn't really know how to deal with all that, but he _does_ know how to deal with some spectral nuisances. At least it helps him vent his frustrations.

Danny flies up above the buildings, scanning downtown Amity Park and reaching for his Fenton Phone.

"How goes the hunting?" Danny asks.

Tucker answers first. "Just some nameless ghosts. They barely seem conscious. You?"

"Let's just say the one I was after is _hiss_ tory."

"... Was it a snake?"

"Bear-snake. Or snake-bear. It seemed a little more snake than bear," Danny says. Not sensing any ghosts close by, he heads uptown, flying high above the city. It's beautiful seeing everything from up here. Usually a good flight helps calm him down, but Danny still wants to hit something.  It's just not the same when he's hunting half-formed animal ghosts that can hardly think.

It's not as _fun_.

"Found a regular," Sam says, interrupting Danny's thoughts. "I think I saw Kitty by the park. She wasn't doing anything, but I'll keep an eye on her."

Kitty's definitely more fun than a snake-bear.

"I'm on my way," he says.

"I don't think that's—"

Danny takes out his Fenton Phone and stuffs it in his pocket. No point in risking it getting damaged.

It doesn't take him long to find Kitty. Just like Sam said, she's walking through the park. It looks like a regular stroll and she's relishing the attention the men are giving her. At least until they get close enough and realize she's a ghost and not some regular young woman.

Danny doesn't see Sam anywhere nearby. Maybe she moved on since he said he'd take care of Kitty. Either way, it doesn't matter. He flies down, leaning forward and folding his arms under his chin so it looks like he's lying on the air.

"Hey," Danny says, grinning when Kitty spins arounds.

"Oh, it's just you." Kitty pops her hip and examines her nails. "What do _you_ want?"

"Stop terrorizing my town."

"Wha—" Kitty is cut off by an ectoblast Danny shoots from his finger. It's weak, meant more to startle than hurt, but still strong enough to make her stumble. "What the hell! Don't you and Johnny have some kind of truce or whatever?"

Danny ignores her. He swoops around her and fires again at her back, a little stronger this time, and Kitty is knocked off her feet. She goes sprawling on the grass.

"Okay, that's it." Kitty shoots into the air and spins around, bringing a hand to her lips. "If you want to fight, let's fight!"

She blows a kiss, sending a blue lip mark hurtling in Danny's direction. Danny grins and ducks out of the way, flying beneath her while firing a series of ectoblasts. Kitty dodges them, turning constantly to keep Danny in her sights as he flies around her. Her hands glow blue with spectral energy and she fires twin beams from her fists.

They gouge the earth, the smell of burnt grass rising from the darkened patches. Kitty jerks her hands to the side, following Danny as he flies evasively, and her ghost ray manages to clip his shoulder.

Danny cries out as he's thrown to the ground by the force of the blast. Of _course,_ she just _had_ to his already bruised shoulder. When he touches his shoulder, his hand comes away covered in ectoplasm.

Kitty doesn't give him any time to wallow, quickly following up her attack with a barrage of ectoblasts. Danny scrambles to avoid them, his eyes widening when he realizes one is about to hit him in the chess.

Danny panics, unable to dodge in time or turn intangible against an ecto-attack. Just as the blast is about to hit, a hole opens in his chest and the attack sails harmlessly through. When the hole closes, it feels like all the air has been sucked from his lungs and he heaves in a weezing breathe to compensate.

The split-second leaves him vulnerable and Kitty shoots forwards, hands glowing. But Danny recovers faster than Kitty is able to attack. He leaps into the air, twisting and spinning, and delivers a devastating, ecto-powered kick to the middle of Kitty's back. She slams into the dirt with a surprised shout.

She's dazed, but Danny isn't done. Hovering over her, he charges an ectoblast between his hands and throws it down. It explodes when it hits her and Kitty screams in pain, thrashing as the energy consumes her. When the light of the blast fades, she's prone on the ground. Still conscious, but unmoving and unable to fight.

Danny grins and pulls out the Thermos, pressing it to Kitty's shoulder and activating it. She doesn't even wail as she's sucked inside. He can only think one thing as he caps the Thermos and returns it to his belt.

 _Damn_ , does winning feel good.

( •̀ ᴗ•́)و

Deep in the Ghost Zone, Clockwork stares at his viewing screens with a melancholic expression. A frown tugs at his lips and he watches with half-lidded eyes. He turns away as the screen is engulfed in the bright light of the Fenton Thermos beam, turning instead to the many alternate realities of this world.

Not many people would be able to look upon these screens and see the things Clockwork sees. The people, the places, the obvious things, sure. But they wouldn't see the important things. The subtle increases in violence, the scared expressions on the faces of Daniel's loved ones, the defeated looks on his enemies and allies alike.

Six months ago, only a handful of these screens had shown bitter futures, even as they constantly shifted through the infinite number of alternate realities. Slowly, that number has dwindled until there are no less than nine "good" futures that Clockwork can see.

He raises his staff and waves it through the air. There's a soft spark, a faint blurring of purple energy, but that's it. The perspective on the screens doesn't change.

Clockwork looks away. He has never seen time shift so dramatically like this before. Has never lacked this much control over it. It takes a great force of will for him to look back to the present timeline. The Sam girl is the focus of the scene now. She's shouting.

Ignoring what he sees, Clockwork waves his staff again, and the events on the screen start playing backward. It's more than a relief at least that power is working. He takes it back one day, to the lost time Daniel mentioned earlier. Lost time that Clockwork had not been aware of until his ward mentioned it.

When Clockwork sets the screen to play normally again, there's nothing. Just an empty screen. For the first time in his life, there is something that he doesn't know.

Clockwork closes his eyes. He is Daniel's guardian. His role, beyond being Master of Time, is to guide Daniel to the best possible future. Looking at these screens now, Clockwork finds himself facing a frightening possibility.

He is failing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! I updated before midnight for once! Yay! I feel like this chapter kind of stretches to fill the prompt, but I doubt it's going to be the last one
> 
> A personal headcanon of mine is that everything seen on Clockwork's screens is being shown from someone's perspective. In weird, meta fashion that is fitting to Clockwork's power, he can show things from his own perspective, which is a perspective that can already see everything without stepping outside the Clocktower. But Clockwork feels that showing the direct perspective of people involved makes it more personal and helps separate him more from the Observants, who only see things how they want to see them.  
> Sorry about how slow going it has been so far, hopefully that bit of action helped pick things up a bit :P there'll be more to come.
> 
> I was originally going to have Danny fight Johnny because I love their broship, but his fighting capabilities are pretty limited, so I went with Kitty instead. I also really wanted to use some of Danny's freaky spectral body manipulation because that's one of my favourite abilities, but I hardly ever use it in my fics.
> 
> Also thought I'd share that you can find me on tumblr as @kinglazrus


	5. Sunset

The one uniting factor between Danny's conflicts with Freakshow, besides the key players involved, is artifacts. A little bit ghostly, a little bit magical. Freakshow on his own isn't impressive, but he knows how to take advantage any tools available to him.

Which is why Danny came up with a plan that morning. The only way to make sure Freakshow doesn't get his hands on any dangerous artifacts is to get their hands on them first. It's simple enough. Just track down every ghostly artifact they know of and make sure they're all safe and sound.

He texted Sam and Tucker as soon as he thought of it. Tucker answered immediately. Sam didn't answer at all.

"The Tiger Coat? Shield of Bo-co-la-mort? Where have you even heard of these things." Tucker scowls as he goes through the list of artifacts. He has his PDA in one hand, with the other on the control wheel of the Specter Speeder.

Danny, flying just ahead of the Speeder, shrugs. "Sam's books, I've looked through a few of them. And I think it's pronounced bou-coo-la-mor. Boucolamort."

"We don't even know if these things are real," Tucker says. "I've never even heard of them."

Danny turns around and flies backwards, crossing his arms as he stares at Tucker. "And I'm sure you knew all about the Soul Shredder, and the Eye of Aragorn, and the Reality Gauntlet before Sam found them in her books, right?"

"Hey, I could have. You don't know," Tucker protests.

"Yeah, I do." Danny laughs at Tucker's dejected frown and turns back around. They're in a part of the Ghost Zone none of them have explored much, not too far from Ember's lair. In fact, if Danny squints, he can see the stadium off in the distance.

It's quiet and empty, as the Ghost Zone tends to be unless there's something big going on. That's the thing about infinite space, you can fly for days and never see another soul.

"What am I looking for?" Danny asks.

"Uh, didn't you make the list?" Tucker asks. When Danny just stares at him, Tucker shrugs and reads the information Danny gave him. "'The Tiger Coat is said to be a robe made of dragon hide.' Then why is it the _Tiger_ Coat? That makes no sense."

"'It's said to have belonged to a great warrior,' blah, blah, blah, protects from death, disease, and famine. Some history stuff... do we really need to know this?" Tucker's ramblings devolve into soft muttering as he reads through skims the unimportant parts. "Says it should be locked away in a chest behind a door."

Danny takes in the floating doors, of which there are an abundance everywhere in the Ghost Zone, and sighs. "Of course it can't be _that_ easy."

"The door looks like this," Tucker says.

When Danny turns around, Tucker is holding his PDA to the front window. The picture's a little small, the tiny screen size not helping at all—why can't Tucker just get a normal phone like every other teenager—and Danny has to lean in close to see it.

The door looks old and ornate, made of dark metal, covered in spikes and delicate designs. Pretty unique, as far as Ghost Zone doors go, but it can still take them a while to find. Maybe Frostbite would lend him the Infi-Map, just for a little bit...

"There's one last note." Tucker pulls his PDA back and scrolls down to the final bullet point. "The door originally belonged to a monastery in the Middle East. Doesn't say where, apparently it's not written in the lore, but that doesn't matter."

"It's a real-world item," Danny finishes the thought.

He and Tucker share matching grins. This job just got ten times easier. All it takes is the flip of a switch for Tucker to turn on the scanner. The sonar pings as a few real-world items register on it's radar, their locations flaring red on the screen.

They might still be searching for hours, but now it's a little less futile.

Danny phases through the Speeder and takes the co-pilot seat. Tucker wordlessly changes their course, turning the Speeder around so they're heading towards the closest real-world item.

Sitting in the co-pilot seat feels a little odd. Usually Danny either flies alongside the Speeder, or he sits squished between Sam and Tucker. Danny bites his lip, taps his foot. Looks at the floor like it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

Tucker lets Danny maintain the silence, constantly checking the sonar to make sure they're heading in the right direction. Finally, when Danny can't take it anymore, he asks the one question he's been dying to ask the whole time they've been in the Zone.

"Why didn't Sam want to come?"

"Said she wanted to do some research and see if there's anything we should add to your list." Tucker glances at Danny. "She didn't tell you?"

"She's been ignoring me," Danny confesses. "Since yesterday."

(ﾟﾍ ﾟ )

_"What the hell was that?" Sam snaps, stomping down the path towards Danny._

_"What was what?" Danny asks. He takes in the damage to the park. It's not bad, but no damage would be better. Vlad likes to rub the destruction in Danny's face every time he makes a mayoral announcement about "revitalizing the neighbourhood." Ugh. Vlad._

_"Kitty wasn't doing anything!"_

_Danny flinches away at Sam's tone. She's more than mad, she's seething. Hissing her words through her teeth, fists clenched at her sides, eyes narrowed. He doesn't really get why. "She was here."_

_He thinks that's all he needs to say. It makes perfect sense. Kitty was here, and he's supposed to make sure ghosts_ aren't _here, so he took care of it._

_"That's! That... that doesn't even- what does that mean?" Sam asks. She's leaning in close. She's never looked at Danny like this before. They've fought before, of course. But this is the kind of look Sam usually reserves for her environmentalist justice moments, when she rages against pollution and corporate USA. This isn't the kind of look she's supposed to give Danny._

_"Why are you mad?" Danny counters._

_"Because that was wrong!"_

_He frowns. Was it? It didn't_ feel _wrong. Winning feels pretty good. Protecting Amity Park feels good, too. It's what he's_ supposed _to do, isn't it? So why would it be wrong?_

_"But..." Danny hesitates, wonders if he should continue. He knows he's right. "It wasn't wrong."_

_Sam doesn't answer right away. She looks Danny up and down, a glint in her eyes. Not quite disappointment, but close._

_"This isn't right," Sam says. She shakes her head and leans back. "I'll... see you later, Danny," she says, and walks away_.

(ﾟヘ ﾟ  )

Tucker's gaze drops and he says, "Oh. That."

The sonar pings, and they're almost right on top of the real-world item. They take a moment to look for the door, conversation brushed aside. There's nothing here except a toy train. It looks sad, the engine sagging downwards as it bobs on the currents of ectoplasm running through the air. It doesn't belong here, but it's already lost to the Zone.

Tucker waits for the next ping before heading off in a new direction.

"I don't think I've seen her that mad before." Danny plays with his gloves, plucking at the fingers and pulling. They don't go far, he can't remove them even if he wants to. "At least, not at someone who wasn't killing whales."

"She has a point, dude," Tucker says. "She told me what happened, and it didn't sound like Kitty was doing any harm."

Danny looks at Tucker with wide eyes. Slowly, Danny's eyebrows scrunch together as he realizes the truth. "You don't get it either, do you?"

Tucker side-eyes Danny. "Get what? That you overreacted? You let Johnny and Kitty run around the city all the time. What was different this time?"

Nothing, Danny knows that. He was just wrong those other times.

"Just... If you can just explain it to me, then I'm on your side. I trust you," Tucker says.

Danny searches for the right words. It's all perfectly logical in his head. His job is to keep Amity Park a ghost-free zone. If Kitty is there, it's not ghost-free. But Sam didn't get that yesterday, so he needs something better.

His mouth opens and closes several times and he makes vague gestures with his hands. But nothing comes out. He can't explain it. He can't even say it's a halfa thing, it's just the way it is, the way it's supposed to be. What he's meant to do.

"I... can’t," Danny says, surprising both of them.

Danny can talk to Tucker about anything, and vice versa. They don't even need words to understand each other, it's just how they are. They've been friends since daycare. They know each other inside and out, backwards and forwards. But try as he might, Danny just keeps drawing blanks.

It feels wrong.

"Next item," Tucker mutters as the Speeder slows.

Danny leaps at the chance to distract himself, literally. He jumps into the air and flies out of the Speeder, doing a quick loop to scan for the door.

He can see right away that it isn't here. There's a top hat floating just above the Speeder, Tucker probably saw it as soon as they pulled up. But he gave Danny the chance to flee the conversation anyway.

A lump grows in Danny's throat when realizes. He immediately latched on to Tucker's offer, unaware it even _was_ an offer. It's not like leaving the Speeder ended the conversation, they're both still wearing Fenton Phones. It's more like Tucker's saying, "I still get you. I know what you need."

Stupid, amazing best friend, being all considerate and stuff.

Danny flies up to the top hat, grabs it, and smacks the windshield with it. He grins when Tucker jumps in surprise.

"Feeling fancy?" Danny asks. He twirls the top hat and sets it on his head. "I _hat_ to break it to you, but the door's not here."

"Wow. I have no idea how you're going to top that one."

Danny squints and tosses the hat away. "I liked mine better."

Tucker snickers, shaking his head, and sets course for the next real-world item.

Danny grabs onto the Speeder so he can just be dragged along, rather than flying by his own effort. He sees Tucker glancing up at him every once in a while, but Tucker never asks if he's going to sit down again.

"I had to do it," Danny says. He lays his forehead on the glance. "I can't let any ghosts wander around Amity like that."

Tucker shoots him a brief but calculating glance. "Okay, I believe you. But there's a better way to do that. Hitting Kitty when she was already down was a pretty cheap thing to do."

Danny hums softly. Tucker's right, it was a little unfair. Danny should have tried better. Taken her down sooner, faster, harder. If he did, then that final blast wouldn't have been necessary. He'll remember that next time.

(^～ ^ )

Two hours and ten real-world items later they find the door. It looks exactly like it does in the picture. Big, metal, spiky. It's kind of cool. The knocker is a giant ring clenched in the teeth of a fierce looking tiger. Okay, this door is _very_ cool.

Tucker stays in the Speeder while Danny approaches the door. The whole time he approaches, Danny waits for something bad to happen. That's the way these things go, at least in the movies. The hero approaches the door, and as soon as he touches it, _bam_ monsters of booby traps. Unless it's the kind of movie where the trap is sprung _after_ the treasure is taken.

Danny hopes it's neither.

He reaches out and knocks on the door. Nothing happens. When he glances back at Tucker, Tucker just shrugs.

Danny grabs the knocker, half expecting the tiger's head to come to life and bite his hand, and pulls. The door swings open. And it's that easy. Sitting right there, in front of Danny, is the chest. The 'room' the door opens too is more like a closet, only a couple feet deep, made of the same metal as the door itself. The only thing in it is the chest.

The chest doesn't even have a lock. There's a hinge and a loop for where the lock should go, but that's it. The chest itself is entirely wood, and on top of the lid is a carving. The setting sun brushing the horizon. It can just as easily be a sunrise, but staring down at it, Danny can just _tell_. It's a setting sun.

There are scratches along the side of the lid that look like writing. These aren't as smooth as the carving on top, filled with little splinters and surrounded by little, unintentional chips. It looks like someone made them with a knife.

Danny leans in close, trying to read it, but he can't. It's in another language. Hell, it's in another _alphabet_. But he kind of recognizes the general shapes, so at least it's a living language and not some weird proto-ghost lingo.

Danny touches the lid, again expecting something bad to happen. Again, nothing does. He slips the hinge, lifts the lid and throws it back, and there it is. The Tiger Coat.

"It's here," Danny says into his Fenton Phone.

"Awesome. Now what?" Tucker asks.

Danny reaches into the chest and takes out the cloak. It's is heavier than he expected, and longer too. Along the shoulders is dark green fur with silver stripes, while the rest of it is made from scales.

"We take it," he says. "Before Freakshow can."

"If you say so."

Danny runs his hands over the fur. He can tell it's soft, even through his gloves. Holding the cloak, he doesn't feel any power from it. Not that Danny knows what that would feel like anyways. It looks like an ordinary cloak. Still, he wants to put it on. To feel the heavy weight on his shoulders, the fur tickling his ears, the scales brushing against the heel of his boots.

He doesn't, but he wants to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got a little behind because I was sick, and because there was something I had to think carefully about before posting. I was going to write two today, but work, and more thinking... so I'll be posting two chapter tomorrow instead.
> 
> I'm having way too much fun thinking up these silly little puns for Danny. I'm going to work them in wherever I can.  
> Sam hasn't gotten much screen time so far, I'll have to fix that next chapter. She was supposed to be in this one, but then the chapter got too long. I'm really trying to be, at least, moderately consistent with my chapter size, and I really didn't want to cut down on the boys' conversation. I had this chapter completely written before I realized there was absolutely nothing to do with sunsets in here... but I fixed it.


	6. Blob Ghost

Danny sits with the Tiger Coat folded in his lap as he and Tucker move on, heading for Pariah's Keep.

Danny transformed back into Fenton the moment he sat down, so he could properly _feel_ the cloak. Just as he thought, the fur is soft. The scales are too, much to his surprise. And warm. They're a darker shade of green than the fur, almost black, but when the light hits them just right, they have a pearlescent sheen. He still wants to put it on.

"I guess I can see why they called it the Tiger Coat," Tucker says, gesturing to the stripes on the fur. They do look a bit like a tiger's. "But I still think it's stupid. It's almost noon, how long are we going to search for?"

"I want to check in the Infi-Map, and maybe Pandora's Box too. They're both really powerful items," Danny says. He mentally goes through the artifacts that are on the list. Tiger Coat, Soul Shredder, Infi-Map, Pandora's Box, the Shield of Boucolamort, Ring of Rage, and Crown of Fire.

At least they know here most of those are, but the shield won't be easy to find. What information they have on it is limited to "it exists" and "it's a shield." Yeah, not that helpful.

"No offense, but I think those things are safe. Frostbite's strong, and I haven't met Pandora, but... Greek Goddess, right?" Tucker says.

"I don't think she was a goddess," Danny says. He can't remember Pandora's myth, but he doubts it really matters. "I know they're strong, but I'd rather know where they are. We can't underestimate Freakshow."

"I think you're overestimating him." But Tucker doesn't argue. "Soul Shredder first, or?"

Danny nods. "Yeah, we're almost at the keep."

Soul Shredder will be easy to grab. Just a quick fly through the keep, snatch the pumpkin, and leave. With the skeleton guards long melted, there won't be any opposition. Which. Probably isn't good. That's why Danny needs to take it, so no one else can.

The Ring of Rage is locked away where no one can get it, or no one _should_. For one, crazy minute he actually wonders if he could somehow break into Pariah's sarcophagus and steal the ring without the old king waking. He wants to try, feels like he should, but Danny's instincts win out. Nothing is worth the risk of letting Pariah loose.

The crown is more complicated. Danny clearly remembers knocking it off Pariah's head during their battle, but then he passed out and lost track of it. He woke up back in Amity Park, and when he went back to Pariah's Keep to find the crown, it was gone. But Vlad was there, at the end. He's the one who locked the casket. If anyone has the crown, it's probably him.

Which means Danny needs to talk to Vlad. Damn it. That's just about the last thing Danny wants, but he'll put up with Vlad if it can't be helped.

With the Tiger Coat already in hand, that just leaves the shield.

"You know," Tucker says. "This sounds like it would make a pretty badass suit of armour. You got the cape, the shield, the sword." He grins. "You could take on the reaper in this."

Danny laughs, but it's strained. "Sure, Tuck. Sure."

Tucker's only joking. He has no idea what Death is really like. No amount of armour can protect someone from them. Danny knows.

He feels a buzz from his pocket and glances down, checking his phone. There's a message from Jazz.

**Jazz (11:37 am)**  
What happened to texting ever day? Give  
up already?

**(11:37 am)  
**every*

**You (11:38 am)**  
I'm not allowed to sleep in?

Danny really didn't think he would be lying to Jazz this soon, but she only just got to college. The term hasn’t even started yet. He doesn't want her to worry about things that don't concern her.

Pariah's Keep looms in the distance, blood red spires reaching into the sky. Hazy ectoplasm gathers around the island, giving it a bright green glow. The first time Danny was here he was jumpy and afraid. Now, Danny can't stop thinking that, with all the red and green, it looks like a Christmas castle.

Danny lays the cloak down on his seat as he rises and transforms.

"Don't wake up Pariah or anything while you're in there," Tucker says. He leans back, folding his arms behind his head, and closes his eyes.

"Oh, ha, ha. You want to go into the creepy castle and get the sword that summons the spirit of Halloween?" Danny asks.

"Nah, I'm good right here."

The entrance to Pariah's Keep looks like a gaping maw. Judging by the angled windows cut just above the empty doorway, that's probably intentional. It looks the same as it did last time Danny was here, down to the very last bit of rubble from his fight with Pariah.

A faded purple carpet stretches down the main hall, crawling up the stairs at the end and stopping at the foot of the sarcophagus. Giant axes, the heads taller than Danny, hang down between the pillars lining the hall. He remembers that trap from the first time, and the way his heart leapt into his throat when the axes suddenly swung down and nearly cleaved him in two.

Good times.

Danny ignores all of that for the little table pushed off to the side. An afterthought that says, "Oh, yeah. Pariah had this loyal follower, too. Can't forget about him." But most people do.

On the table is a jack-o-lantern. Its hollow eyes stare back at Danny, sharp-toothed grin stretched wide across its face. Stabbed through the top of the pumpkin is a viridescent sword. The leather wrapped pommel, topped with a frowning skeleton, is familiar.

Danny reaches out and grabs the pumpkin, pulling it towards him before he freezes. Sitting on the table behind the pumpkin is a blob. A little, grey blob. Like someone took a perfect circle, and dropped it on the table, and then it just melted a little bit and _smooshed_ outwards.

There's a muddy aura around it, so Danny knows they're a ghost. But his sense didn't go off. Not that it always works right in the Ghost Zone anyways. All the ectoplasm interferes with it.

He pushes the pumpkin aside and drifts forward. The ghost doesn't move. Maybe it's sleeping, or dead. But ghosts can't die again. They _can_ be destabilized and turn into a puddle of ectoplasm, which is irreversible. But still not the same as dying.

Danny leans in and pokes the blob ghost. They tremble, just slightly, but that's it. Danny pokes them again. The blob ghost trembles even more, squirming and wiggling until they roll over. There's a little pop, then two bright silver eyes blink open.

The blob ghost stares at Danny for a moment. A little mouth opens, and it says, "Oooh."

"You're... kind of cute..." Danny flushes, embarrassed. He pokes the blob ghost again. They squeeze their eyes shut, trembling once again in response and making a little, "aah," of protest. Damn. This thing is _really_ cute.

But Danny doesn't have time to play with cute little blob ghosts.

"Good luck, little guy," Danny says. He grabs the pumpkin Soul Shredder is sheathed in and heads back to the Speeder. He's halfway down the hall when he feels something drop onto his head. When he looks up, he sees the little blob ghost staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

They're pretty eyes, for a ghost. Shiny dimes on its dull grey body.

"Get off," Danny demands.

The blob ghost opens its mouth and sticks out its tongue out. A glob of ectoplasm slides off its tongue and lands on Danny's nose.

"Ew, gross!" Danny shakes his head, tossing the blob ghost off, and rubs his nose on his jumpsuit, leaving a bright green streak on the black fabric. He glares at the blob ghost, who is lying on the stone floor, flopped on their side.

They are shaking again.

"What are you doing?" Danny asks.

Their mouth quivers.

"Stop that."

Their eyes glisten.

"It's not going to work."

The blob ghost opens their mouth, making a soft gasp, and then cries. And cries. And cries.

"Okay, fine!" Danny snaps. He jerks his head in invitation.

The blob ghost immediately stops crying and zips up to Danny's head faster than he can blink, settling in his hair.

"If you drool, I'm kicking you as far as I can," Danny says. The blob ghost hums.

Danny doesn't meet Tucker's gaze when he reaches the Speeder. He dumps the Soul Shredder, pumpkin and all, in the back, and takes his seat.

Apparently, the blob ghost trembles all the time because it feels like they're vibrating in Danny's hair.

"Uh, new friend?" Tucker asks.

"It... started crying," Danny says.

"Oh my god, I'm telling Sam."

"Don't you dare."

"I'm texting her now."

Danny lunges across the console as a cackling Tucker reaches for his phone. The blob ghost topples of Danny's head, landing on the cloak in Danny's lap, and _shrieks_.

For a moment, Danny's vision goes black. He can't he can't hear, he can't see, he can't breathe. He tears and scratches at the collar of his jumpsuit, as if that will open up his throat. His lungs burn, ache for air, and just when Danny thinks he's going to pass out, everything comes rushing back.

He heaves in air, wheezing, as every sensation slams into him at once. It's too bright. The hum of the Speeder is too loud. He can feel every shift of t-shirt against his skin, rubbing against old scars. His throat stings and burns.

Tucker reaches out and touches Danny's shoulder, and it first he flinches away. But then Tucker leans into it, putting pressure on Danny's shoulder, holding him still. The heaviness of it helps, feels much better than the light, ghosting touches of his clothes.

When did he even transform?

Danny blinks, slowly, taking everything in. He's Fenton again. The cloak isn't in his lap anymore, and the blob ghost is on his knees.

"You okay, man?" Tucker asks.

"Ye-" Danny's voice cracks and he swallows, "yeah. I'm good."

"What just happened?"

Danny frowns, eyebrows knitted together, and he gives Tucker a confused look.

"It looked like you were dying, dude. One second you were trying to take my phone, and then you just..." Tucker gestures helplessly, hands flopping in the air between them. "And your throat."

"What? What about it?" Danny pulls out his phone, turning on the front-facing camera. There are bright red lines on his throat. Scratch marks. Belatedly, Danny remembers tugging at the collar of his jumpsuit, but if he hadn't been _wearing_ his jumpsuit...

He swallows again. "I'm okay. Let's just, we can... Frostbite and Pandora can wait. Let's just head home for now."

"Yeah, okay." Tucker starts the Speeder up, setting their course for the Fenton Portal.

Danny sinks down into his seat, pulling his feet up and making the blob ghost fall into his lap. They shimmy and turn until they're facing him. That cry just now was nothing compared to the soft sniffles from inside the keep, but Tucker acted like he couldn't even here it.

Maybe he couldn't.

Danny spies the Tiger Coat on the floor. It must have fallen off his lap in his thrashing. He leans down and picks it up, momentarily squishing the blob ghost between his chest and legs. When he stretches out again, the blob ghost flies from his lap and settles on his shoulder.

Running his fingers over the fur is comforting, the softness reassuring. It's a nice sensation, better than the stiffness of his denim jeans, or the uncomfortable warmth of his cotton t-shirt. As soon as he gets home, he's going to put on that pair of really soft constellation pajamas and his favourite hoodie.

The blob ghost huffs. Something wet dribbles onto Danny's shirt.

"You're not cute, you're disgusting," Danny mutters, glaring at the ecto-slobber.

The blob ghost just makes a happy little sound and licks Danny's neck. They're lucky they're so damn adorable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to update twice today, but I'll probably do that on Thursday or Friday instead, so I'll be a chapter behind for a couple days. I'm just too exhausted to do a double update.
> 
> Danny has a Fenton brand phone, so he gets service in the Ghost Zone. I love writing the blob ghost. It's so cute.


	7. Broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore warning. It's just one line at the end of a paragraph, but some people might not like the imagery anyways. If you don't want to read it, skip to the next paragraph at this sentence: "There's ringing in his ears, but underneath that is the persistent crackle of static that grows louder, and louder, and louder until Danny melts, too."

Danny, Sam, and Tucker sit at their normal corner booth at the Nasty Burger, the one with their names carved into the bottom of the table. Sam and Tucker are across from each other, chatting and stealing each other's food, while Danny huddles on a chair at the end of the table. He can't really hear what they're saying. His knees are pulled up to his chest, the hood of his jacket low over his eyes, hands cupping his ears.

He can hear the roar of his own blood.

There's no one else here. All the lights are off. The angry, fluorescent glow of the Nasty Burger sign stains Sam and Tucker's faces bloody red.

Danny can't decide what he hates more, having his back to the other tables or staring out into the parking lot. The night sky is purple and grotesque shapes move about in the fog, but inside. Inside, Danny can feel the empty air behind him, picture all manner of things with crooked limbs and gnashing teeth reaching out to pluck at his jacket. It's the jacket he lost the night of the crash, or whatever the hell that was.

Canvas green, _J. Fenton_ stitched over the breast. It was his father's, from high school.

There's a sharp pinch on Danny's shoulder and he flinches, ducking his head and pulling his knees closer to his chest. He can feel bony fingers dragging along his shoulder blades. Hot breath on his exposed wrist between his sleeve and hood.

Don't look, don't look, _don't look_.

Something pokes his knee and Danny nearly topples out of his seat. He jerks to the side, latching onto the table to stay upright, and stares down at the hand with purple nail polish resting on his knee.

"Hey, Danny."

He looks up.

Sam and Tucker aren't talking anymore. Tucker sits back, arms by his side, head tilted. His glasses catch the glare of the restaurant sign, Danny can't see Tucker's eyes. Leaning across the table, Sam is pressed low so she can see up Danny's hood. Her eyes are black.

Danny's breath hitches and he leans away, into the hands at his back. Fingers curl around his shoulders, digging into his collar bone. The hands tug him back, the legs of his chair shrieking against the tiles.

"Danny, listen. This is important," Sam says. She grabs Danny's wrists, pulling him forward as the things at his back try and drag him away. Sam's mouth parts, her lips moving, but the only thing that spills out is static.

"What?" Danny asks.

Sam's grip tightens. It hurts. Danny's bones creak as she slowly crushes his wrists.

"Are you—" More static.

Danny plants his feet on the tiles, resisting the hands at his back. Wails of protest sound behind him, sharp claws plucking at his jacket.

"What?" Danny whispers, his voice cracking as he tries to fight the pain of his breaking bones.

Sam leans in closer. Their cheeks are brushing. It feels like needles are being pushed into his skin. Softly, Sam asks, "Are you dead yet?"

Danny howls in pain as his wrists break. He shoves back, kicking Sam away and toppling his chair. A hundred bony, white hands lurch from the darkness at grab at his shoulders, his arms, his legs. Their touch burns through his clothes and sears his skin.

Danny screams and thrashes, pressure building his chest. Power thrums under his skin, veins glowing white and hot. He's going to burn from the inside out. Then it explodes, a bright light bursting from his chest.

Heat is everywhere, unbearable, melting glass, and metals, and limbs. Sam and Tucker.

Danny curls up on the floor of the Nasty Burger, or what remains of it. His forehead pressed to the hot tiles. It burns. His wrists throb. There's ringing in his ears, but underneath that is the persistent crackle of static that grows louder, and louder, and _louder_ until Danny melts, too. His skin sloughs off, hitting the floor with a wet slap, bones drips milky white, insides slowly liquefy and seep red through the cracks between the tiles.

He can't hold himself together anymore. He hits the floor with a-

(;⌓ ; )

Danny jerks awake, cutting off a hoarse cry and clutching his chest. A sheen of sweat dons his forehead, and his t-shirt and pillow are damp. Taking slow, gasping breaths, he sits up and swings his feet over his bed. It was just a nightmare. It doesn't mean anything.

He shivers. Nightmare or not, it felt real. He hugs himself, fingers digging into his arms hard enough to bruise. There are phantom aches all over his body, although, some of them are probably real. Like the bruise on his chest, and the matching one on his shoulder.

The bruises have yellowed more but haven't gotten any smaller. School starts up in five days. With any luck, by then, Danny's quicker healing will have taken care of them. If not, wearing a backpack is going to suck.

Danny reaches up to grab his shoulder but pauses halfway. Staring down at his wrist, he rolls it, testing the mobility. It’s sore, but definitely not broken. The crunch of his bones from the dream echoes through his head and he flinches. He shakes out his hands and rises to his feet, toes curling in his carpet.

The clock on his nightstand reads 2:37 am. Gooseflesh raises along his arms, and it takes Danny a moment to realize that it's because his window is open. It's cold. He didn't notice it before, but now that he has, the cold seeps into his skin. But it doesn't bother him much. If anything, it feels distant.

Danny glides more than walks across his room to the door. The hallway outside is dark, of course it is, it's almost three in the morning and no one else is home. He waits for his eyes to adjust before heading to the bathroom and turning the light on.

The drastic change from the dark of the hall to the bathroom light is blinding. Danny squeezes his eyes shut, burying his face in his arms, and has to ease his eyes open little by little until it only hurts a bit to keep them open. He squints into the mirror and all the air leaves his lungs.

Is this really his face? It doesn't look real. The reflection frowns when he frowns. Blinks when he blinks. But it doesn't look right. It's too pale, too grey. Yet, somehow, there's also too much colour. Pale freckles splattered across his nose, bright red flush on his cheeks, dark circles under his eyes. His hair is greasy, and when was the last time he got it cut? It shouldn't be this long.

His parents get home tomorrow. Will they recognize Danny when they see him? He doesn't.

Leaning forward, he stares into the eyes of his reflection. Toxic green bleeds into sickly blue, pooling around his pupils. His eyes are lit by an unearthly power, but behind that light lurks something deep and dark.

Danny's arms tremble. He looks away. Takes in a shuddering breath. He's not still dreaming, is he?

_Are you dead yet?_

Taking care not to look at his reflection again, Danny breathes out against the mirror. Seeing his breath fog the glass is reassuring, but not enough. If he were to let go of the counter now, he'd float away, he's sure of it.

Keeping one hand on the wall, Danny heads back to his room. His phone is on his desk, next to the slumbering blob ghost. Grabbing his phone, he returns to his bed, sitting with his legs crossed, and turns it on.

No new messages.

His thumb hovers over Jazz's name. If there's anyone he wants to talk to right now, it's her. As annoying as her psychobabble can be, she always knows just what to say to make him feel better, or at least feel more human. But it's the middle of the night and he doesn't want to wake her. He doesn't want to bother her with his problems, either. She's supposed to be having the time of her life at Harvard. How's that going to happen if Danny goes to her every time he's a little upset?

Danny shakes his head. He's overreacting. It was just a dream, probably because of how stressed he is. That's what Jazz would say. Just stress.

 _Don't be stupid, Fenton_ , he chastises. _You can deal with this yourself_.

Even though it feels like he's a million miles away, floating in space, losing himself to the apathy of the void. He glances out the window. If he leans a little to the left, he can see the faint stars of the Capricornus constellation.

Any other night, Danny would look at it and rattle off a list of all the facts he knows—five of its stars have planets, the brightest star is Deneb Algedi, the part of sky where it resides is called the Sea—but not tonight. Tonight, they're just stars. They are not grand, or magnificent, or fascinating. They are just a bunch of dying lights he can never reach.

Danny's gaze drifts from the night sky back to his phone. Tucker isn't online, but Sam is. The orange "idle" circle by her name stares up at him.

"What should I do?" Danny asks, not expecting any response.

A soft hum grabs his attention and he looks to his desk. The blob ghost is awake.

"Well?"

"Ooah," they say and roll onto their back, sticking their green tongue into the air.

"That's so helpful, thank you," Danny says.

His fights with Sam don't last long. Beyond the initial explosion, it's a battle of wills. Who's going to give in and reach out first? That's all it ever takes. One of them gives in, they have an actual conversation about their fight, and then it's over. Because of how much time they spend together, their arguments are usually resolved before sundown. But not this time.

Sam didn't answer any of his messages yesterday, didn't even read them. Didn't join Tucker and him in the Ghost Zone. She _loves_ the Ghost Zone.

Danny opens their conversation. At the bottom, just under his last message— _I'm sorry. Something happened today_ —is the read receipt. It's barely anything, almost nothing, but Danny feels a weight lift from his chest anyways. Reading his messages is a step up from completely ignoring them. Maybe she's not mad anymore?

Making a decision, Danny types out his message.

 **You (2:48 am)**  
Can I talk to you?

He bites his thumb, chewing on the nail as he waits for a response. _She's not mad anymore_ , he thinks. She can't be. He didn't do anything wrong. What _is_ wrong is not hanging out with her. It's not like Sam, Tucker, and Danny spend all their time together, but they've been friends for so long. There were there for the accident. They helped him get control of his powers. Saw him become a hero. Supported him when no one else would.

Through everything, Sam and Tucker have always been there. Even when Danny was staring down the barrel of the darkest future, his evil self. They believed in him. He needs Sam not to be mad. He needs _her_.

The typing indicator pops up on the screen. Danny grips his phone tighter, hunching over, grinning. The three dots bob up and down for a few seconds. A minute. Two minutes. Then they stop. No message comes.

The orange dot by her name turns grey as she goes offline.

The smile slips off Danny's lips. He waits for something inside him to break, for tears to come. Instead he just says, "Oh."

He turns off his phone and puts it face-down on his bed. Still hunched over, he rests his elbows on his knees and stares blankly at the floor. It doesn't matter, anyways. Sam might as well be as far from Danny as the stars. Nothing matters.

Suddenly, the room starts spinning. He presses a hand to his temple as a wave of dizziness rolls over him. Shooting clumsily to his feet, Danny pitches forward, barely managing to catch himself with one, jerking step. There's a twinge in his chest. It quickly grows from a prickle to a sharp, stabbing pain.

Clutching his chest, Danny stumbles, searching for something to lean against. He sways backwards and this time he isn't fast enough. His feet sleep out from under him and he blacks out before he hits the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was the dream sufficiently weird/freaky enough? I've never tried a dream sequence like that before, was going for an unsettling feeling that slowly devolves into horror. Or something. Not sure how well the horror part went, I feel like it could be much better.
> 
> I forgot how time-consuming writing is. Luckily I've got some days off coming up, so I can do some double updates.


	8. World-Building

This time, Danny wakes up on the floor of the lab. There are no new bruises. The world isn't spinning, his head isn't pounding, and he doesn't have to vomit. So, bonus. There _are_ scratches on his left arm that weren't there before, but they're minor, barely even bloody.

He's surprised by how unaffected he feels by all this. Sam's drifting away from him, he's losing more time, Clockwork can't help him, and there's been no news on Freakshow.  At the moment, he just doesn't care. Maybe, in a couple hours, or a day or two, he will. But right now, the emptiness is a blessing.

If he doesn't have to feel how broken he is, then it doesn't matter that he's broken.

Danny heads to the safety sink, probing the scratches on his arm. There's four of them, starting on his upper arm and curving down past the inside of his elbow. They sting a little, but, compared to other wounds he's gotten in the past, this is basically a paper cut. Nothing to work up a fuss over.

Turning the tap to cold, he sticks his arm under the water, washing off the scabs and bloodstains on his skin. There are a couple dark flakes of something in one of the scratches, and he has to pick at them to pull them out. They're small and purple. Danny has no idea what they are.

With a shrug, he washes them down the drain, dries his arm, and touches it up with some anti-septic. He'll have to put on a sweater or a shirt with longer sleeves before his parents get home. But, glancing at the clock, Danny sees that won't be until much later in the day.

He was only out for a couple hours this time, nothing close to the whole day and a half he missed before. Not to mention, he can actually remember right up until the moment he blacked out. Not that he wants to.

On the far wall, the portal hums. Even with the foot-thick steel door and anti-ecto interlocking system, the sound of the Ghost Zone seeps through.

Danny remembers the first time he heard it. It was weeks after the accident, after he had unlocked his powers and learned to change back and forth from Fenton to Phantom at will. Sam wanted to call the sound something poetic, like a song. Danny, being the only one who could actually hear it, gave it a much more appropriate description. Chatter.

Being near the portal was like sitting outside a loud conference room, where you can only hear snatches of words and a general lull. Except the voices echo and carry with them an ethereal quality that no tech in the world can properly mimic. Tucker's tried.

Danny doesn't want to call it anything so meaningful as "the voice of the Ghost Zone." It's just a place, not a conscious thing. But it _is_ made up of hundreds of thousands of imprints of post-human consciousness, as his mother would say.

He's not hearing the Ghost Zone itself, but the ghosts that live there. Their collective thoughts pushing and straining against the portal, trying desperately to get free. He knows that feeling, too.

Standing in front of the portal, he figures that now is as good a time as any to see Frostbite and Pandora. Tucker might be disappointed Danny didn't call him to tag along, but it's not even sunrise yet, and Danny knows he won't be going back to sleep any time soon. Might as well do something productive.

He approaches the portal's console, sparing a glance at the ecto-containment unit sitting beside it. Inside is the Tiger Coat and Soul Shredder. The blob ghost freaks out anytime the coat is near, so Danny left everything in the lab when he and Tucker got back yesterday.

And speaking of the blob ghost, when Danny turns to put his thumb on the lock, the ghost is perched on the console, it's viscous body drooping over the buttons.

"What do you want?" Danny asks. He's not even sure why he kept the ghost with him, it's proved to be more of an annoyance than anything. But there's this connection between them. It's hard to explain. He looks at the blob ghost—who he _really_ needs to think of a name for—and thinks, "I belong with you." It sounds ridiculous when he actually spends a moment thinking about it, but that's just how it is.

He doesn't complain when the blob ghost flies up and settles on top of his head. Apparently, they really like that seat.

Sighing in resignation, Danny presses his thumb to the lock. It beeps in approval and the doors to the portal slide open. He transforms and shoots off into the Ghost Zone.

( ￢ _￢)

From the outside, the entrance to the Far Frozen looks awkward. A tunnel sticking right out the side of a massive, floating landform. But inside it looks amazing.

The green haze of the Ghost Zone is absent, a soft blue glow from within the ice itself illuminates the tunnel. The icicles jutting out from the walls cast sharp shadows, creating a a kaleidoscope of blues and blacks. Near the tunnel's exit, the icicles get smaller until there's only smooth wall, and then it opens up into a vast field of snow.

Here the sky is blue. It almost looks like they're in the human realm. Almost. But Danny can see the streaks in the "sky" that tell him it's not sky at all, but a massive dome of ice.

Across the field of snow is a ring of mountains. The inside is carved out in an intricate network of tunnels and dens that provide homes for the yetis, and in the middle of the mountains is the colosseum where Danny first trained his ice powers.

Being here makes him feel all kinds of nostalgic.

Frostbite is waiting at the main cavern entrance when Danny approaches. He's grinning, waving his arm of ice and calling out, "Welcome, Great One!"

Danny doesn't smile back, but he waves. As he lands, he keeps on hand on the blob ghost to stop them from falling into the snow. He sees the moment when Frostbite notices Danny's passenger. Frostbite blinks, taken aback, and his smile falters. But then he smooths out his expression like nothing happened at all. Danny wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't already been watching.

"The sentries saw you approach. What brings you here today?" Frostbite asks, clapping Danny on the back. The bruise on Danny's shoulder throbs.

"And who is this new friend?"

Danny looks up at the round, silver eyes. "This is Dime. I guess I'm sort of taking care of them? I'm not sure."

Dime trills happily, but whether it's about the name or Danny's statement, he isn't sure.

"But I have a favour to ask, sort of," Danny says. He and Frostbite start walking—or floating in Danny's case—towards the main cavern. "An enemy of mine, a human one, escaped recently. He has a knack for ghostly artifacts, so I'm trying to collect any tools I think he might use if he gets his hands on them."

"I see." Frostbite nods. "And you would like to borrow the map to track some of these items down? Very wise, Great One, it would ease you on your quest."

"Right. But it's a little more than that." Danny takes a moment to consider his next words carefully. "If Freakshow somehow gets the map, he could use that too. So... I'd like to take it. For safe keeping."

"Absolutely not," Frostbite says immediately. He stops and turns to Danny, a heavy paw coming down on Danny's shoulder. The injured one.

Danny holds back a wince. "I can protect," Danny says.

"I do not doubt your abilities. You have bested foes I would struggle to defeat. But this is a matter of responsibility." Frostbite motions to the walls, which are covered in carved murals. One of the murals is of a yeti with one arm, holding the map.

It takes Danny a second to recognize it as Frostbite. Standing across from Frostbite, hands out in offering, is a nondescript figure.

"The Infi-Map was given to me to be under my protection. It is my responsibility. While I have a great deal of trust in you, should anything happen to the map I would be the one at fault. And you must remember what happened last time I left the map in your hands."

This time, Danny does wince. He's not sure he'll ever forget his little foray through time, chasing Vlad across the centuries.

"There are few people who can reach this place without our permission, and even fewer who could have stumbled upon it as you did. The map is safest here, in our hands," Frostbite says.

"But it's _not_ ," Danny snaps. He grinds his teeth together and clenches his fists. "You just said I was wise, you call me 'Great One.' I took on Pariah Dark, and Nocturne, and Undergrowth. I took one the most powerful ghost to ever, and never, exist. If anyone can protect the map, it's me."

Frostbite tilts his head, looking Danny up and down. "It looks as if you'd like to strike me, Great One."

It's not a lie. Danny can't help it. He _needs_ the map, and Frostbite is standing in his way. The urge to lash out is so strong, it's almost unbearable. His respect for Frostbite is, perhaps, the only reason he hasn't already.

"Please," Danny says, loosening his jaw and shaking out his fists. "I can protect it."

Frostbite shakes his head. "I am sorry, Great One. But I cannot let the map leave the Far Frozen. It is much safer here than anywhere in the Infinite Realms."

Danny crosses his arms. He doesn't want to give up, but he also doesn't want to fight Frostbite for the map. The desire is there, a little voice in the back of his head pushing him to refuse Frostbite's refusal. But he can't. This is _Frostbite_. His mentor.

"If you're looking for more artifacts, would I be wrong to say Pandora's Box is one of your targets, if you haven't been there already?" Frostbite asks. There's a calculating look in his eye, a sort of amusement, appreciation, and apprehension all on in.

"Yeah," Danny says slowly.

"I would advise you not to approach Pandora with this request. She will not take it as kindly as I have."

"But-"

"The thing you must understand, Great One, is that there are powerful things at work in the Infinite Realms. Things that may be beyond your comprehension. And because of this, there are many ghosts living here who have a responsibility they must never give up." Frostbite pauses, tapping his chin with an icy finger. He points at Danny. "Would you ever give up protecting Amity Park to another ghost?"

"Of course not!" Danny can't even imagine it. Sure, there are other ghost hunters in town, like his parents, and Val. But Amity is still Danny's to protect, in the end. He doesn't think anyone could protect it as well as he does. If, for any reason, he had to leave Amity Park to someone else, Danny isn't sure he would be able to rest easy. Amity park is _his_ responsibility.

 _Oh_. So that's what Frostbite meant.

"What's with powerful ghosts and not wanting to help me?" Danny says as he relents.

"I may be helping more than you know." Frostbite grins. It's a wide smile that shows off all of his teeth, but there's mirth in his eyes. He probably doesn't even realize that it looks threatening. "But indulge me, what do you mean?"

"Do you know how Clockwork is?" Danny asks.

"The Master of Time, one of the oldest beings in the Infinite Realms. I have never met him, few have. But yes, I know of him," Frostbite says. They start walking again, head through the main mountain tunnel towards the colosseum on the other side.

"Yeah, that guy. He's my guardian," Danny says.

Frostbite stumbles, but doesn't stop walking. Surprise is written across his face, in his wide eyes and gaping mouth.

Danny keeps talking. "I went to him for help, but he refused. He likes to say a lot of cryptic stuff, and usually that's sort of how he helps me, but this time he gave me nothing. I was really counting on his guidance."

"You guardian," Frostbite muses. The sound of fighting echoes through the tunnel, and when they exit into the colosseum, they see a match between two yetis going on below. Frostbite guides Danny to a boxed off area among the stands, where a large chair is surrounded by several smaller ones.

Frostbite takes the larger chair while Danny sits beside him. Danny doesn't recognize the ghosts that are fighting, but it's a good fight. The smaller of the two is fast. The large one, though a bit slower, has excellent control of his ice.

"Clockwork is not like other ghosts," Frostbite says. "In fact, he isn't a ghost at all."

Danny's brain grinds to a halt. He looks away from the fight. "Um... what?"

"Clockwork is an _idea_. A manifestation of consciousness based on a collective thought. Different from human ghosts, different from natives of the Ghost Zone. He is not the only one. Pandora, for example. She is the collective consciousness of your Greek myths."

Danny isn't sure how to react to that. He's always known Clockwork is different, can feel it with his ghost sense, but he never realized his guardian was _that_ different.

Suddenly curious, Danny reaches out with his sense. Not very far, otherwise he'll get overwhelmed by the hundreds of other signatures in the stands. Just to Frostbite. The king of the Far Frozen feels unique, too. If Danny were to describe it, it's like standing at the edge of a snow storm.

"And you?" Danny asks.

Frostbite laughs heartily. "No, I'm afraid not. I may be strong, but I am just ghost. Things like Clockwork and Pandora, they are so much more. And beyond them, there are beings even stronger. The Infinite Realms is a truly amazing place, you should never underestimate it."

Danny nods. It's all he can really think to do. This is unexpected, but not unappreciated. There's so much about the Ghost Zone he doesn't know, even though it's been three years, almost four, since his accident.

"I am truly sorry I can't provide the assistance you need," Frostbite says. "However, I know a way you can at least vent your frustrations."

The fight below is just coming to an end, the smaller of the two yetis taking down their opponent with an impressive blast of ice. The yetis in the stands roar with approval.

Danny still doesn't feel like much, but a good fight is a good fight. "Yeah," he says. He cracks his knuckles and grins. "I think I'll take you up on that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's looking good for a double update! For some reason, I kept typing "blog ghost" instead of "blob ghost" this chapter, and now I can't stop picturing a ghost that's the amalgamation of every blog on Tumblr. Screw Pariah or Dan, I think that's the scariest ghost Danny could ever face.


	9. Pet

Danny leaves the colosseum feeling unsatisfied. He was there for a good few hours, fighting in match after match, with only a couple breaks for the yetis to fight each other. He dominated, wiped the floor with his opponents, proved himself worthy of the title "Great One."

And yet, he still feels empty.

Dime, rather than hitching a ride on Danny's head, is flying beside him, re-enacting the colosseum fights. At least, that's what Danny thinks they're doing. Dime zips this way and that, letting out squeaky war cries and high-pitched explosion sounds. It's very flattering.

Danny lets himself be distracted by Dime for most of the flight. Watching them fly around and roar with false fury is a good source of entertainment. It lasts up until the portal is within sight, when Danny realizes he didn't actually do anything productive during his trip.

Turned down by Frostbite, he didn't even try to go to Pandora about the box. Learning about Clockwork was interesting but doesn't really make the trip worth it. Knowing Clockwork is something other than a ghost doesn't help Danny track down a human. Knowing there are things more powerful than Clockwork? That helps even less.

Besides, there's probably nothing more powerful than Death, and Danny's already met them.

"Ooh," Dime says.

Danny jerks back when he realizes Dime is right in his face, a little too close for comfort.

"You smell like rotting wood," Danny says.

Dime sticks out his tongue and licks Danny's nose.

"Yeah, whatever." Danny pushes Dime away and heads for the portal.

Without the Infi-Map or Pandora's Box, that just leaves two artifacts unaccounted for. The Shield of Boucolamort and the Crown of Fire. Thinking of the crown inevitably brings up thoughts of Vlad.

Danny's lip curls. He can think of fewer things more disgusting than Vlad pursuing Danny's mother and Danny himself in an obsessive fashion. The perfect wife and son, that's what Vlad likes to call them. The man is truly insane, and no one can convince Danny otherwise. But he also has something Danny wants.

He can't imagine what Vlad would be doing with the crown. It's been nearly two years since that fateful fight against Pariah Dark. If Vlad wanted to make a move with the crown, he would have. Maybe he doesn't even have it any more.

If that's the case, does Danny really need to go see him? It will just be another wasted trip. But Danny knows Vlad. As much as he hates it, _loathes_ it, he knows Vlad. How he thinks, how he acts, _why_ he acts. Having a connection to someone that vile is horrible. Danny would like to cut that part out of him and be done with it, but he can't. And right now, that part of him is whispering that Vlad would never, ever give up something so powerful as the Crown of Fire.

Danny flies a couple laps around the lab, Dime perched on his back. He doesn't want to go. He wants to put it off for as long as possible, but he can't. The thought of needing Vlad for anything sends shivers up Danny's spine. But there's no helping it.

"Twenty minutes," Danny says. "In and out. Get the crown, make sure it's safe, and that's it."

His last, meaningful conversation with Jazz comes to mind. _You could have told me it's a half-ghost thing_. It's a halfa thing. That was one of Jazz's favourite phrases, her own casual way of acknowledging that she can't possibly understand what Danny's going through. But back then, in the car-

Danny stops flying, jerking upright so fast Dime slips from his back before they can catch themselves. They bounce against the lab floor, but Danny isn't paying attention to that. Back then, _in the car_.

He couldn't remember the car ride before. Thinking back, Danny isn't sure when he started remembering. If he wasn't actually thinking about it, would he even realize when he remembered?

Running over the events in his head, Danny checks exactly how much he can remember. Being in the car, that stupid cassette player. Blanking out.

Danny blinks. That's right, he blanked out in the car.

"What the hell." Danny groans and sinks to the floor, clutching his head. It doesn't make any sense. He's used to dissociating, but that isn't what happened in the car. And it wasn't like his larger blackout, or the one that happened earlier today. He thought his new blackouts were like his old ones, but that isn't true, is it?

In the past, he didn't go anywhere. He didn't lose control of his body, wake up with new injuries he can't explain. Before, it was like he was just spacing out. In the car, he can almost say he got lost in the rhythm of driving and that was it. But it's still not quite right.

It's like picking up the phone, only there's no one on the other end. Except Danny's the one who isn't there.

"This is just ridiculous," he says to Dime. They chirrup uselessly in response. Not like he expected anything better.

Dissociation, space-outs, blackouts. Isn't that a little excessive? He can barely keep track of it all.

"A halfa thing," Danny mutters. There's only one other person in the world who understands halfa things.

(•́︿ •̀ )

Vlad lives on the rich side of Amity Park, only a couple blocks away from Sam, actually. But while Sam lives in the more industrial rich area, where instead of mansions they have massive town houses that take up a quarter of a block, Vlad resides in the mansion area. His own mansion has a massive yard, surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and a plaque that reads "Mayor's Mansion."

It's gaudy and excessive, which means it suits Vlad perfectly. It's also well protected against ghosts, since Vlad's mansion has a tendency to get utterly destroyed during any big conflicts. If Danny's estimate is right, this is the third house Vlad has had to build on this estate. A real tragedy.

For Danny, of course, since Vlad keeps on building his house every time it gets totalled. If Danny had his way, Vlad would be carted back to Wisconsin and dumped on the blackened husk of his first mansion.

Wary of any shields or alarms, Danny approaches the front gate as Fenton. Dime is tucked away into the front pocket of his baggy jeans. Danny points at the button for the intercom and hits it with an ectoblast.

The security camera above the gate moves, shifting downwards, and the lens turns as it focuses on Danny. He sticks out his tongue at it.

"Daniel," Vlad's silky voice echoes through the intercom. The way he says Danny's name makes Danny want to vomit. "What brings you here?"

"Not a fight. At least, it doesn’t have to be," Danny says.

Vlad chuckles. "Very well. Mind your temper, Little Badger."

The gate buzzes and slides open. Danny slips through as soon as the opening is wide enough. The faster he gets in, the faster he gets out, and that’s all right with him. The gravel drive leading up to the front door winds back and forth across the grass. It's a useless design feature that Danny completely ignores.

He cuts straight through, taking extra care to kick gravel into the grass whenever he goes from one to the other. And _maybe_ he lets burning ectoplasm drip from his fingers as he walks, ruining Vlad's perfectly manicured lawn.

Petty revenge can be _so_ satisfying.

He doesn't have to knock when he reaches the front door. Vlad is right there waiting for him, peering out the window, and swings it open before Danny even reaches the top step. Danny is bombarded by Packers paraphernalia the second he steps through the door. Predictable.

"Have you finally accepted that your father is an utter buffoon and are here to pledge your allegiance to me?" Vlad asks.

"In my worst nightmares," Danny hisses.

"Oh, a man can dream." Vlad sighs, looking at Danny likes he's a pesky fly rather than a powerful enemy. "Then what _does_ bring you here?"

"I thought I'd change up my look a little bit," Danny says. He transforms, feet lifting off the ground while Dime is pushed from his pocket. They swing around Danny's back, out of Vlad's sight. Danny points to the air above his head. "Do you know about a crown that would look good sitting right about here?"

Vlad quirks an eyebrow and says, "I don't think a crown would be very fitting."

Void black transformation rings, the complete opposite of Danny's blinding white, spark around his waist and separate as Vlad changes to Plasmius. Vlad smirks. "I think a jester's cap would suit you much better."

"Where's the crown, Plasmius?" Danny asks.

"My, my. And I thought you weren't here to fight, but just _look_ at those angry eyes." Vlad _tsks_. "Careful, Little Badger. You might irk the wrong man one day."

"A bigger man than you."

"You can do better than that."

"The Packers can do better than you."

Vlad gasps and growls, eyes flaring red. "Take that back!"

Danny leans forward, crossing his arms and adopting what he hopes is his usual impish grin. "No."

Instead of firing back some scathing remark about Danny's intelligence, or his age, or his lack of tact, Vlad pauses. He stops floating, folds his hands behind his back, and stares. It isn't his usual stare, the one full of a sick possessiveness. It's not even his, "I know a thousand ways to kill you, but I don't feel like putting in the effort," stare. There's no malice, no amusement, no calculated gleam as if he's thinking of all the ways he can one-up Danny next. Just a glimmer of curiosity, and pity.

"How are you feeling, Daniel?" Vlad asks.

Danny blinks. "Um, what?"

"Are you feeling well? You're acting strange."

Danny drifts backwards. Is it really that obvious? He thought he was getting pretty good at hiding his dissociative episodes. His parents certainly never notice. Jazz always does, but she knows what to look for. Sam and Tucker can too, but they spend more time around Danny than anyone.

"Don't forget, I know you well," Vlad says.

Danny swallows. He wants to deny it, but it's true, isn't it? Out of all the people Danny knows, _Vlad_ is among the four who know him best. Better than Danny's own parents. Danny's fists clench and he looks away.

"Have you ever..." Danny hesitates. He doesn't want show weakness in front of Vlad. "Have you ever lost yourself?"

Danny shakes his head, running his hands through his hair. "Like, you've spaced out, or something. A lot."

Vlad pivots on his heels, cape flaring around his knees, and walks down the hallway. After a few feet, he stops and turns, raising an eyebrow. "Well?" he says, and keeps walking.

Danny glances at Dime, who had been hiding behind Danny's back. Dime mumbles indistinctly. They follow Vlad and wind up in a sitting room, both halfas back in human form. Vlad sits on a couch while Danny claims a large chair across from him. Dime huddles between Danny's thigh and the armrest.

Having Dime there is comforting, and Danny strokes their head with his knuckles. He always wanted a pet. Before now, Cujo was the closest thing Danny ever had, but Cujo is his own person. Or, dog. Ghost dog, whatever. He does what he wants. But Dime has barely left Danny's side since they met. They like to nuzzle, and even know they're making a little rumbling noise that sounds like purring. Maybe it's not such a bad thing he found Dime.

"How did you die?" Vlad asks, breaking the silence. He rolls his eyes when he sees Danny's confused face. "I know the portal was involved, but how did it happen?"

"There was a switch that wasn't on. I accidentally hit it while I was inside," Danny says. He's seen how Vlad's accident happened; this will only make them even.

"You were electrocuted," Vlad guesses. "You died then and there."

Danny nods.

"I was sick for years before I actually died," Vlad says. "It was the worst pain I could ever imagine, dragging on forever. And then I saw _them_."

Danny can't help it, he scoots forward, enraptured. This is what he wants to know.

"I told them I didn't want to go, so they sent me back. But they kept a piece of myself with them, a promise that I would one day return. And in exchange, I was given something else." Vlad presses a hand against his chest.

Danny mimics the action. He knows about the emptiness inside of him. It's the place where he reaches whenever he wants to go ghost. Even now, if Danny focuses, he can feel a flicker of his core there.

"We belong to them, Danny."

It doesn't sound right, hearing Danny's preferred nickname from Vlad. He says it so softly. Fatherly. In a way that doesn't set Danny on edge. Danny likes it better when Vlad calls him Little Badger.

"They can't keep us, not until we die for real, but we are still theirs. And they can call us away whenever they please," Vlad says.

"We're theirs," Danny echoes.

Neither of them says anything for a long time. The silence is awkward, but not wholly uncomfortable. It comes with a reluctant acknowledgement. They are the only two people, the only two beings, who has a connection with Death in this way. And because of that, they have a connection to each other. An unmistakable bond they neither asked for, nor desired. But it's there.

Danny supposes it's better to have someone who can understand him rather than no one at all, even if that person is his worst enemy. He can't imagine those decades Vlad spent all alone. It almost makes Danny feel sorry for the man. Almost, but not quite. Maybe if Vlad were a better person.

But Danny was hoping for more. It's amazing how quickly he got an answer from Vlad, without even asking. It isn't the answer he hoped for, but it _is_ an answer. It doesn't explain everything, though.

"What about blackouts?" Danny asks.

Now Vlad looks surprised. The air of fellowship between them shatters as a devious smile curls Vlad's lips. "Blackouts?"

Danny immediately regrets mentioning them. "Never mind, it doesn't matter."

"Please, Daniel, feel free to share."

" _It doesn't matter!_ " Danny shouts, shooting to his feet. Dime rolls across the chair and shoots into the air, bumping into Danny's elbow.

At the sight of Dime, Vlad visibly starts. He slides down the couch, as far from Danny as he can get without standing up.

"Why do you have that _thing?_ " Vlad says, a ghostly echo in his voice.

"It's just Dime," Danny says.

"You _named_ it?" Vlad rises from the couch, smoothing out his suit, but he doesn't take his eyes off Dime. His hands tremble, wisps of ectoplasm dancing between his fingers.

"I have the crown," Vlad says, surprising Danny with his candor. "I won't just hand it over to you, but I have it. You have what you wanted to know, now get that thing out of here!"

Danny's never seen Vlad so shaken up. Vlad's eyes flash dangerously, a dark and bloody red. It's time to go. Danny doesn't want to fight Vlad right now. Gathering Dime in his arms, Danny turns and walks briskly towards the door. He can hear Vlad following, but Danny knows Vlad isn't watching him.

Danny yanks the door open and rushes outside, pausing on the front step. He looks back.

Vlad stands across the entrance hall, a healthy distance between him and Dime. His face is twisted into a nasty snarl, but there's more fear than anger in his eyes.

"Vlad?" Danny asks. In that moment, he's genuinely afraid of Vlad in a way he hasn't been before. Vlad looks feral and dangerous.

Vlad's gaze snaps up from Dime to Danny and hardens. There is no more pity in those eyes, but a mocking disdain. "Have you ever tried meditation, Little Badger?" he asks. "You might learn a thing or two."

The door glows pink, then slams shut.

Danny jumps, nearly dropping Dime, but gathers himself quickly. He sets off down the lawn, once again cutting over gravel and grass. This time, it's because he's in a rush to leave, not because he's being spiteful. What little relief talking to Vlad provided is gone now.

If anything, he feels worse than he did before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter where I feel like the connection to the daily prompt is stretched a little, but double update! So that makes up for it, yes?


	10. Water

Danny takes his time flying home. It's been a long day and it's not even ten o'clock. Maybe he should just crawl into bed and sleep, wait until the world stops looking so wrong. He knows the streets below him like the back of his hand, but it's hard to recognize them right now.

That's one of the hardest things. Looking down at the city, _his_ city, and asking himself, "Is this really Amity Park?" There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be able to instantly recognize Dover Street as he flies over it. Nothing's changed since yesterday, or the day before, not with the city at least.

But Danny can't help it. He looks down and everything looks wrong. Fake. Flat. Like one of those optical illusions people paint on sidewalks. There isn't really a city below him, someone just painted it there, and if Danny flies down and touches the ground, he'll see it's all just flat. He knows it isn't. But knowing something and seeing something are two different things.

Dime, once again perched on Danny's head, helps ground him, at least a little bit. Dime is deathly cold, the kind of numbing, aching cold that's impossible to ignore. Danny focuses on that feeling as he flies.

Nearing Fenton Works, he sees someone standing on the front steps. They’re leaning forwards, peering through the front window. When he gets closer, Danny recognizes the red beret and realizes its Tucker.

Scanning the street, Danny makes sure there’s no one around to see, then lands on the stoop beside Tucker.

“Hey,” Danny says. He looks above Tucker's eyes, at his beret. It's easier.

“Dude!” Tucker grabs the collar of Danny’s jumpsuit. “Where’s your phone? I’ve been trying to call you for half an hour.”

Danny pats his thighs, where pockets would be if the jumpsuit had any. “I left it on my bed.”

“The GIW found Freakshow!” Tucker says. “I’ve been playing around with radio frequencies, trying to crack their radios, and I finally did. Someone called it in, he was at the river, by the train bridge.”

Danny’s eyes widened. “Did they get him?”

“As far as I can tell, no. The signal wasn't great, but it sounded like they were having trouble catching him.”

“We have to go, _now_.” Danny grabs Tucker by the waist and shoots into the air. Tucker yelps, clutching his phone to his chest and squeezing his eyes shut against the wind. Danny’s flying as fast as he can with a passenger.

“Shouldn’t we get Sam?” Tucker shouts. His voice is ripped away by the wind, and he has to scream his question a second time.

“No time!” Danny roars back. He ignores the little hiss of _liar_ at the back of his mind. Sam probably doesn’t want to see Danny anyway. This is for the best.

They reach the bridge in under two minutes. The last time Danny was here, he pushed Sam off a moving train and nearly let her plummet to her death. Danny was under Freakshow’s control last time.

They sweep under the bridge, rocketing towards the water, and Danny’s ghost sense goes off. He pulls up short. Tucker cries out in protest, clinging to Danny’s shoulders as his legs swing forward and he nearly slips from Danny’s grasp.

Danny glimpses something small and green flying towards them from the corner of his eye and dives. Spinning towards the source, Danny flies backwards until he's over the riverbank and sets Tucker down.

Halfway up the bridge, floating next to one of the towering supports, is Lydia. Her tattoos swirl in the air around her and when she shoves her hand forward, they go flying towards Danny and Tucker. Danny throws up a shield with one hand and pushes Tucker back with the other.

"If Lydia's here, Freakshow's undefended. I'll take care of her while you find him," Danny says. Lydia's tattoos hit the shield and Danny pushes back. His hands pulse as he pumps more ectoplasm into the shield. It strains for a moment, then explodes, throwing Lydia's tattoos back.

"Dime! Go with Tucker!"

Dime leaves their seat in Danny's hair and hovers by his shoulder. Their face scrunches, cheeks puffing out, aura flaring, and their body starts to stretch. There's a _pop_ , and then there's two Dimes instead of one. They chirp in unison and one of the Dimes lands on Tucker's shoulder.

"Ah, cold!" Tucker shudders, shoulders bunching around his ears, and he takes off down the riverbank.

One of Lydia's tattoos, a skull with flames surrounding it, shoots after Tucker. Danny blasts it before it can reach his best friend and settles an icy look on Lydia. She flinches and her tattoos quickly return to her body.

Danny's eyes flash dangerously as he raises his glowing fists. "No ghosts in Amity Park," he says, and charges.

( ⋋ _⋌)

The sound of ectoblasts trails after Tucker as he runs, but he doesn't look back.

"You wouldn't happen to know if we're going the right way, would you?" Tucker asks Dime. He's not expecting an answer, but he gets one. The seeping cold disappears from his shoulder as Dime rises and shoots through the air. They stop after a couple feet, loop-de-loop, and trill eagerly.

At least, Tucker thinks it's an eager sound. He doesn't exactly speak blob ghost, but it looks like a yes, so he'll take it.

"Awesome! Lead the way!"

He watches out for any GIW as he runs but doesn't even see a flash of white. It doesn't make any sense. Tucker knows what he heard, and the GIW said they had eyes on Freakshow. There should be someone here. Not that he's complaining, the GIW would only get in the way.

Dime pulls up short and Tucker has to duck, or else get an ice cold, rotten smelling blob ghost in the face.

"There's no one here," Tucker says, eyeing the riverbank. They're far enough down that he can't hear Danny and Lydia anymore. Because of the bend in the river and encroaching trees, he can't see them either.

The bank here is five feet higher than the river, a steep slope that you have to lean over the edge to see where it meets the water. Dime hums, sinking down past the bank towards the water. Tucker slowly edges forward, careful of the unstable ground, and peers over the edge.

Half submerged in the water, pressed up against a large rock, is an unmoving GIW agent. Dime settles on the agent's chest, sitting there for a moment before making a happy squeak.

"He's alive?" Tucker asks.

Dime's answer is drowned out by a loud splash and gasp as Freakshow appears. Near the middle of the river. Fully dressed and fighting against the current.

"What the hell?" Tucker mutters.

"Where is it! _Where is it!_ " Freakshow shrieks, flailing about in the water. He's holding something in one hand, but Tucker can't see what it is. Then he's diving, the tail of his coat disappearing into the muddy water.

"What. The. Hell." Tucker deadpans.

It isn't long before Freakshow bursts through the water again. This time, Tucker catches a glimpse of what's in Freakshow's hand. It's bright red, half a sphere with a jagged edge.

Tucker's sure that, normally, he wouldn't think anything about seeing half a red sphere. It would just be a rock to him. But here, in the hands of Freakshow, Tucker sees it and only thinks on thing. _The mind control crystal_.

"You there," Freakshow shouts when he sees Tucker. "Friend of Phantom, where is my crystal!"

"Uh, you're holding it?" Tucker backs away from edge of the bank. Freakshow on his own isn't supposed to be dangerous. Without his artifacts, or his minions, he's just a guy with ghost envy. But he's looking pretty dangerous right now, dangerous and desperate.

With frantic strokes, Freakshow swims to a section of the shore a few yards down from Tucker, where the bank dips down so it's only a foot above the water. He clambers onto dry land, sopping clothes slapping against the dirt and creating a puddle of mud.

"There's always one, always one that stay where it breaks. The rest are scattered, but I almost have them all!" Freakshow says.

Tucker backpedals as Freakshow approaches, digging through his pockets. There's nothing there but his phone and his PDA. He didn't have a chance to grab any weaponry before Danny carried him off. It wouldn't hurt Freakshow, being human, but it would at least slow him down.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Tucker says.

"Lies! Tell me where it is!" Freakshow lunges.

Tucker spins around to run away but he isn't fast enough. Freakshow snags one of Tucker's belt loops and they both tumble to the ground. Tucker almost bites his tongue when his chin hits the ground and gets a face full of dirt. Clawing at the mud, he tries to pull himself forward, but Freakshow's grip is firm.

Rolling onto his back instead, Tucker looks up just in time to see Freakshow bring the crystal down towards Tucker's head. With a panicked shout, Tucker bucks, bringing his feet up and kicking against Freakshow's chest. Freakshow loses his grip, on both Tucker and the crystal, as he's kicked aside.

Tucker scrambles to his feet while the crystal rolls away. He lunges for it, but Freakshow beats him to it. Freakshow curls around the crystal, kicking at Tucker's shins, sending him stumbling back.

The unstable bank gives under Tucker's weight and he plummets into the river. The water is surprisingly cold for the end of August, and the undercurrent immediately starts pulling at him. He reaches out blindly, latching onto the first solid object he finds, and breaks the surface.

He's face-to-face with the GIW agent.

"Ah!" Tucker shouts, jerking back, but the agent doesn't react. He stares blankly.

Because of the angle of the bank over the river, Tucker couldn't see it before, but now that he's inches away from the agent, Tucker notices the glazed, half-lidded eyes. The slack mouth, lips flecked with mud and dirty water.

The agent is dead. And Tucker is holding onto his arm. Tucker let's go immediately, grabbing the rock the agent is pressed up against instead. It's not much better, but he prefers it to holding a dead guy's hand.

Dime, still sitting on the agent's chest, smiles. They tremble and twitch, inching across the agent's chest towards his hand.

Tucker follows Dime's path with his eyes and gasps when he sees something shiny and red clutched in the agent's fist.

"Sorry," Tucker whispers as he pries the agent's fingers apart. He ignores the bile rising in his throat and the twist in his gut, focusing on the chunk of crystal. It falls into his palm and he presses it to his chest.

"So you _do_ have it."

Tucker's gaze snaps up to Freakshow, who's peering over the edge of the bank. Freakshow grins, Tucker's grip on the shard tightens, and Dime makes popping noises with their lips.

Suddenly, Freakshow pales, if that's even possible with his sickly grey skin.

"You're not supposed to be here," he says. There's no teasing lilt in his voice. His expression is stricken, eyes wide and horrified. He's looking at Dime.

Dime sticks out their tongue and blows a raspberry.

"I'll never go back!" Freakshow shrieks. His gaze lands on Tucker, zeroing in on the crystal shard in Tucker's hand. His eyes flash purple. "Give me my crystal!"

With a feral cry, he lunges over the riverbank and tackles Tucker into the water.

(  ⁰ д⁰)

Danny seethes, clenching and unclenching his fists as he glowers at Lydia. She lies on the ground, beaten and bruised. Her tattoos, now nothing more than bright green splatters, are scattered across the riverbank.

Once upon a time, when Danny was first starting out, Lydia was a challenging opponent. Not anymore. Years of constant skirmishing with Skulker, being pitted against enemies far stronger than himself, and fighting in the Far Frozen's colosseum have improved his skills drastically.

But Lydia keeps getting back up. Every time Danny knocks her down, she forces herself up and comes at him again.

Danny admired her loyalty the first time they met, now it's just annoying.

Lydia's flight is shaky and her arms tremble as she flies at him again. Danny swats her away with an ectoplasmically fueled fist. She crashes into the trees, too exhausted to even go intangible.

"Normally, this is the part where I trap you in the Thermos and go find Tucker, but," Danny pats his belt, "I forgot to bring the Thermos today.

Lydia pushes herself up on her hands and knees.

"Give up!" Danny shouts.

Lydia launches herself forwards. Danny raises a hand and erects a shield in her path. She slams into it and sinks down.

Ectoplasm gathers in Danny's eyes, making them glow even brighter than before. He looks down on Lydia, ready to unleash the blast.

Dime suddenly squawks, distracting Danny. The glow fades from his eyes as Dime flies in Danny's face, shouting wordlessly over and over again.

"Tucker?" Danny asks, panic seeping into his voice.

Dime nods.

Danny looks at Lydia, who's slowly getting to her feet again, and says, "I don't have time for this." He has only one attack that's guaranteed to put Lydia down and keep her there. He drifts back, putting some distance between him and Lydia, and plants his feet on the ground.

Clenching his fists, Danny takes a deep breath, letting the ecto-energy build in his lungs, and releases it all at once as a ghostly wail. The deafening, ethereal scream tears across the riverbank, ripping up grass, uprooting trees, and blowing the water back.

It hits Lydia and she's thrown into the air, the waves of energy ripping and tearing at her spectral body. She slams into a pillar of the train bridge, creating a small crater as the stone cracks. The bridge groans, chunks of stone falling into the river below.

Danny cuts the wail off, panting heavily from the effort. Lydia stays plastered to the bridge for a moment before she falls, hitting the ground with a thud. She doesn't get back up.

Danny goes to find Tucker and doesn't look back.

( ⌣̀ _⌣́)

Danny finds Tucker ten minutes down the river. He's lying on the bank, splayed out on his back. There are bruises on his face and arms and he's soaking wet. Freakshow is nowhere in sight. The two Dimes fly around each other in little circles, chirping, then the duplicate pops out of existence.

"Tucker!" Danny kneels in the mud beside his best friend.

"Hey," Tucker croaks, peering at Danny through his eyelashes. "So, I found Freakshow."

"Where did he go?" Danny asks. Tucker is the only one here, but something is pushing against his ghost sense. Not strong enough to set it off, but it makes his spine tingle.

"Ran off when he heard the wail." Tucker pushes himself up on his elbows. "Hard fight with Lydia?"

Danny shakes his head. "Not really. Freakshow?"

"He's, uh, different. But I think I won, technically."

Danny eyes Tucker's bruises and feels sincere doubt at that. It must show on his face, because Tucker sits up all the way and brings up his fist. He opens it and shows Danny a red chunk of... something.

"What is that?"

"A piece of the mind control crystal, from Freakshow's staff," Tucker says.

Danny stares. "Oh," he says.

"Yeah." Tucker nods and lays back down. "Oh."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Down days = no updates. Whoops. I'll try and do some double updates on my days off, but worst comes to worst it just means I'll need to take an extra week in June to finish this story. I might be able to do a second chapter today, it depends on when I get off work tonight.
> 
> I'm not totally satisfied with Freakshow's characterization here. I know why he's acting to differently, but I would have liked to fit in some of his usual antics here. Next time he'll be more like himself.


	11. Shapeshift

Tucker rests on the bank for another five minutes before his eyes snap open and he heaves himself up. "Okay," he says. "I'm good now."

Danny rolls his eyes and pokes— _gently_ —at a bruise on Tucker's jaw. Tucker gasps and cups the spot with his hand.

"Yeah, no," Danny says. He grabs Tucker's hand and helps him to his feet, brushing clumps of dirt and mud off Tucker's back. "I think I've still got some bruise cream you can use in my kit."

"I thought you just bought a new tube?"

Danny brings a hand to his chest and grimaces, looking away so Tucker can't see his face. "I, uh, lost it."

"Sure, man. Here, you take the crystal thing, but don't lose it." Tucker grins and holds out the chunk of crystal. His hand twitches in a _take it_ gesture. He wraps an arm around Danny's shoulders, getting ready for flight.

Danny opens holds out his palm to take the crystal and Tucker drops it into his hand. The second it touches him, a stabbing pain lances through Danny's chest and he goes down. He would have fallen flat on his face if it weren't for Tucker's arm around his shoulders. Latching onto Tucker's wrist, Danny struggles to stay upright. An intense burning grows in his chest, radiating outwards, making him numb, and hot, and cold all at the same time.

He drops the crystal and it stops.

Danny slumps against Tucker's side, swallowing thickly and staring at the crystal. Nothing like that happened the last time he touched it.

"Um, maybe I should just hold on to it for now," Tucker says. He bends down, picks up the crystal, and shoves it in his pocket. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Danny gasps and nods, rising unsteadily to his feet. He swallows again and transforms into Fenton. Being back in his human skin feels odd. He's spent more time as a ghost in the past twenty-four hours, and now he feels heavy. "But I think we should walk back."

"That... sounds like a good idea," Tucker says.

Fighting against the heaviness in his legs, Danny starts walking.

(@︿ @ )

It takes them twenty minutes to get back to the city. The river lies at the bottom of a ravine, and the walking path along the cliff face zigzags back and forth to create a gentle slope. Getting back to Fenton Works takes another forty. It's almost noon by the time Tucker settles onto Danny's bed, and Danny digs through his desk for the first-aid kit.

He tosses Tucker the tube of bruise cream and grabs some fresh clothes from his dresser.

"I need a shower," Danny announces. Leaving Tucker to take care of his bruises, Danny heads to the bathroom. He locks the door and turns the shower on, pulls his shirt off over his head, and eyes his chest bruise in the mirror. It's gone down a little since yesterday, turning the ugly brown of an old bruise. But there's something off about it.

Danny looks down, probing the edges of the bruise, where he can see prominent red veins. Well, that's new. He can't remember anything like that happening in the past, and he should probably be more concerned. But there's so much going on right now, who really cares about one more thing?

Danny certainly doesn't. He wants to throw his arms in the air, say "Screw this," and fly off into space or something. But he can't, because he can't just leave Amity Park, and his friends, and his family behind like that. But it would be so, _so_ easy.

He checks the scratches on his arm next. They've scabbed nicely and should be gone by the time school starts on Tuesday. He takes his time in the shower, letting the hot water wash over him. It feels nice against his aching shoulder.

Remembering the veins on his chest bruise, Danny cranes his neck and examines his shoulder. This bruise has actually gone down a lot more. There's no hint of red and it's probably two-thirds the size it was yesterday. Two more days and it'll be like it was never there.

He shuts off the shower and shakes his head, droplets of water flying off his hair. As he dresses, he checks his phone. One new message from Jazz, asking him how he's doing. He sends her a quick _Boooooored_ while pulling on his jeans, then stuffs his phone in his pocket.

Towelling off his wet hair, Danny heads back to his room. When he gets there, Tucker is still sitting on the bed, sleeves rolled up, skin glistening from the bruise cream. Tucker's on the phone, turned towards Danny's window. Danny can only see part of his face, but he looks stricken. Jaw slack, eyes wide, cheeks ashen. Dime is on a pillow beside him, on their back, staring at the floor with their mouth open in a perfect "o."

"I'm with Danny right now," Tucker says. "We'll, um, we'll be right there."

"Who was that?" Danny asks, tossing the towel into his laundry basket. "You look-"

"Sam's in the hospital," Tucker says.

Danny freezes, stopping so abruptly he rocks forward on his toes and back into his heel to stay balanced.

"She fell out a window."

Danny and Tucker meet each other's eyes with matching looks of horror. They're a flurry of movement as Tucker dives for his jacket and shoes, and Danny transforms. Tucker only has one shoe on and his jacket over one shoulder when Danny grabs him and starts flying for the hospital.

(ˊᐞ  ˋ  )

They burst through the doors of the hospital and have no idea where to go from there. Tucker has a death grip on Danny's wrist and he's shaking as he pulls on the rest of his jacket. A good part of that fear is for Sam, but Danny knows the rest of it is from Tucker's phobia of hospitals.

Dime, tucked away in Danny's pocket, trembles, too. But that could be for any reason.

Danny marches up to the reception desk and leans on the counter. "Hi," he says when the receptionist looks up. "We're here for Sam Manson, is she okay?"

"I can only release that information to family," the receptionist says. He glances at his computer screen. "She's in orthopedics. Go to the second floor and left down the hall, there's a waiting area there."

"Thanks," Danny says and drags Tucker towards the elevator.

Tucker takes deep, controlled breaths as they make their way up, eyes shut tight while he squeezes Danny's wrist. Danny's probably going to have a bruise there after this, but he doesn't mind.

As soon as the doors open to the second floor, they take off. At a _brisk walk_ , not running, they definitely aren't running, this is a hospital and that would be irresponsible.

Okay, they're running.

They find the waiting area exactly where the receptionist said it would be. Pale blue chairs make an L against the walls, and a coffee table scattered with magazines is in the middle of the seating area. Jeremy Manson sits in one of the chairs, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hands. Ida and Pamela aren't there.

"Mr. Manson?" Danny asks, walking forward with Tucker in tow.

Jeremy glances up from his coffee. He doesn't look particularly distraught, just tired, which is a good sign. He focuses on Tucker and says, "Angela managed to reach you." His gaze slides to Danny and Jeremy tenses, eyes narrowing.

"You shouldn't be here."

"Uh, what?" Danny blinks.

Jeremy stands. "I don't know what happened, and for Sam's sake, I won't make any accusations until she can tell us her side. But Pamela won't be so withholding."

"Dude," Tucker says. "What'd you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" Danny protests.

Someone screeches. "You!"

Danny jumps, jerking towards the noise. Pamela Manson, in all her polished glory, storms down the hall. Heels clicking on the tiles, not a single hair out of place, perfectly manicured hands reaching towards Danny. She grabs the collar of his shirt and yanks him forwards.

Danny, being on the shorter end, isn't much taller than Pamela, but his muscle is more densely packed. On an average day, Pamela wouldn't be able to make him budge, but he's so caught off guard that she manages to drag him down so they're completely at eye level.

"You have no right to be here!" she shouts, jostling Danny. "I should call the police. In fact, I will!"

Letting Danny go, Pamela turns away, hand darting into her purse and snatching her phone. She manages to punch in nine-one before Jeremy is there, putting his hand over hers.

"Pam," he says, softly. "You promised to wait until Sam wakes up, to hear what she has to say."

Pamela's hands shake. All it will take is one twitch of her finger to press the final number. For a moment, Danny thinks she's going to do it. Pamela and Jeremy appear to have a silent conversation, full of quirking eyebrows, lip twitches, and nostril flares, until she lowers her phone and puts it back in her purse.

"The Foley boy can stay," Pamela says. "But you have to leave."

Tucker's grip on Danny's wrist tightens, then disappears entirely. He shuffles his feet but doesn't step away.

"Will you be okay?" Danny asks. He doesn't want to leave. Tucker hates hospitals, and Sam is hurt. But Pamela is furious. She may still look composed, but her lips are pressed together so tightly her mouth is white, and she won't even look at Danny. One wrong move, and she'll never let Danny near Sam again.

"I think so? One of us should be here for Sam," Tucker says. He doesn't sound confident at all. His voice shakes, his eyes are constantly darting around, and now that he's not holding onto Danny, he's stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and hunched over. But he's trying.

"Text me later," Danny mumbles, taking one last look at Pamela's enraged expression, and Jeremy's resigned one, and trudges out of the hospital.

He decides to walk home, rather than fly, and takes the long route through the park. As soon as he's away from the main path, Dime flies out of his pocket.

"I'm not in the mood," Danny says.

Dime's face scrunches, their body trembling. It starts to change, stretching taller and becoming thinner, colours appearing over their grey skin, and soon a miniature Tucker is floating in the air in front of Danny.

Dime-as-Tucker squeaks and waves their arms about, pulling a PDA from their pocket and punching randomly at the buttons. It's cute and funny, but Danny doesn't feel like smiling. Dime frowns, then changes again, turning into Lydia's flaming skull tattoo. They clack their teeth and bob around Danny's head, dancing. It still isn't enough to get a reaction.

Dime shifts back to their normal form, cheeks puffing out in disappointment as Danny keeps walking. They zip ahead, stop, and turn back, flying right into Danny's chest. He stops, hands jerking up to cradle Dime. They settle on his palms and shapeshift again.

This time, it's a miniature Danny. Human form. Wearing blue jeans and his signature red and white shirt under his dad's old jacket. Dime-as-Danny crosses their arms and stomps around on Danny's palms, looking annoyed. Dime punches the air, shadowboxing. They jump and kick, and fall back into Danny's hands with a soft _oomph_.

Danny snorts.

Dime's body snaps back to its regular shape and they trill happily.

Danny shakes his head. Things are far from okay, but having Dime helps. He's happy they stayed with him. Although it'll be hard to keep them hidden when his parents get home this afternoon. Dime will probably set off their ghost hunting equipment.

"Whatever," Danny mutters. Just another thing to worry about. He's about to start walking again when his ghost sense goes off. His eyes flash green, with a flicker of red around his pupil. Taking down some ghosts sounds like a good idea right about now.

Danny transforms and takes off in search of the ghost, leaving Dime to catch up. As Dime starts flying after him, they coo and smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The past few days have been pretty busy for me, and I've decided it's too exhausting to update daily. I'd rather not stay up until 2 in the morning forcing myself to write on the few nights that I actually feel tired before midnight. I'm aiming to update every second day from here on out. If I can, I'll update a couple days in a row, but considering I only get one or two days off a week, don't count on it


End file.
